DAYS 
ABROAD 


S.   FULLER 


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TEN  DAYS 
ABROAD 


H.    S.     FULLER 


NEW  YORK: 

THE  SCHOOL   NEWS  COMPANY 
156  FIFTH  AVENUE 

1901 


COPYRIGHT,  1901, 

BY 
H.  S.  FULLER 


Press,  122  W.  14th  Street,  New  York 


IN    REMEMBRANCE    OF 
MANY    PLEASANT    JOURNEYS, 

THIS    BOOK 
IS    INSCRIBED    TO 


MY   WIFE 


344900 


This  narrative  grew  out  of  a  few  letters  relat- 
ing the  writer's  pleasant  experiences  last  August, 
on  a  short  trip  abroad  for  recreation  and 
rest.  Several  months  are  not  now  required  for 
such  a  journey.  One  may  see  in  a  week  more 
than  was  possible  in  a  month's  time,  half  a 
century  ago,  and  enjoy  it  fully  if  the  mind  is 
passive,  and  the  purpose  not  simply  to  attempt 
how  much  may  be  accomplished  in  a  short  space. 
These  sketches  the  writer  hopes  may  help  others 
whose  recreation  intervals  are  short  to  as  thorough 
enjoyment  as  he  obtained  from  this  trip.  New 
people  and  customs  when  mingled  with  the  asso- 
ciations of  a  vivid  past  from  which  all  our  present 
life  has  come,  give  an  agreeable  and  healthful 
stimulus  to  the  fancies  which  carry  us  out  of,  and 
away  from  the  daily  routine  of  habit  and  cares. 

New  York,  March  21,  1901. 


CONTENTS 

Chapter  P<*g* 

I. — Sailing  of  the  Minnehaha,  11 

II. —In  Mid  Ocean,  21 

III. — In  London  Town,     -----        35 

IV. — Old  London  Memories,  49 

V.— Over  the  Channel,     -  -        61 

VI. — Shakespeare's  Home,  72 

VII.— Kenilworth  Traditions,  84 

VIII.— The  Ride  from  Birmingham,  95 

IX.— Edinboro'  Town,        -  105 

X.— Through  the  Trossachs,   -  -                         114 

XL— In  Glasgow  Streets,  124 

XII.— The  North  Irish  Coast,      -  -        -      133 

XIII.— On  the  North  Atlantic,  -       145 

XIV.— Sandy  Hook,       .......       157 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

Page 

One  of  the  Lions — Frontispiece,  36 

From  a  Photograph  of  one  of  the  Landseer  Lions  at 
the  foot  of  Nelson's  Statue,  Trafalgar  Square. 

Down  the  Hudson,       -  13 

From  Photograph  taken  by  Dr.  F.  M.  Banta  on 
the  Minnehaha's  Maiden  Trip. 

Sunday  on  Deck,  19 

The  Ocean  Pathways,  23 

Southern  Route  of  the  Minnehaha,  Westward. 
Northern   Route  of  the  Furnessia  from    Glasgow 
returning. 

From  the  Strand  to  St.  Paul's,  40 

A  leaf  from  Fry's  London  Guide. 

Parliament  Houses  from  Westminster  Bridge,          55 

Oliver  Cromwell,  58 

From  Photograph  of  Thornycroft's  Statue,  Parlia- 
ment Buildings  facing-  Westminster  Abbey. 

Old  Paris— Vignette,  63 

Griffin— Vignette,  65 

From  Notre  Dame  Tower. 

"Tanks!"— Vignette,  71 

Kenilworth  Castle,  92 

The  Banquet  Hall  and  Mortimer  Tower. 


A  Birmingham  Passenger— Vignette,       -  96 

John  Ball  Preaching— Vignette,  100 
Engraved  from  an  Old  Print. 

Edinburgh  Castle,        -  104 

A  Highlander— Vignette,  107 

The  Bailie  Nicol  Jarvie— Vignette,    -  118 

Loch  Katrine,       -  122 
From  Roderick  Dhu's  Watch  Tower. 

The  University  of  Glasgow,        -  127 


TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

* 


SAILING  OF  THE  MINNEHAHA 


I  AST  "ashore"  had  been  called  — the 
siren  had  torn  from  the  air  its  final, 
uncanny  shriek.  Then  the  gang-plank, 
which  is  not  a  gang-plank  in  modern 
steamers,  but  a  huge  suspension  foot-bridge,  was 
raised  aloft.  The  last  cable  dropped,  and  our 
steamer,  the  Minnehaha,  was  an  island,  a 
leviathan  in  the  water,  parted  from  all  human 
touch ;  but  still  incompetent  and  helpless,  though 
her  twin  screws  churned  the  black  waters  of  the 


12  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

slip  into  white  foam,  until  two  .stout  tug's  had 
grappled  with  her — as  ants  will  seize  upon  a 
mammoth  lizard — puffing  and  churning  foam  all 
the  while,  as  the  great  bulk,  gathering  impulse, 
widened  the  breach  between  herself  and  the  pier 
— the  world. 

Cameras  on  ship  and  wharf  sprung  their 
parting  snap  shots,  and  familiar  faces  were 
fading — as  all  faces  that  we  care  for  will  some 
day  fade,  when  Charon's  dark  skiff  floats  them 
out  on  the  tide.  A  bugler  with  pink  cheeks,  and 
in  white  duck  jacket,  blew  a  farewell  strain  from 
the  Captain's  deck.  And  the  melody,  "Because  I 
Loved  You,"  touched  a  chord  that  brought 
spasmodic  responses  into  more  than  one  face 
among  the  cluster  of  waving  handkerchiefs, 
grouped  at  the  end  of  the  pier, — though  an 
irreverent,  dark-featured  youth  of  Germanic 
extraction  beside  me  on  the  deck,  hummed 
regardlessly :  "I'd  leave  my  happy  home  for 
thee,"  and  straightway  engaged  me  with  the 
inquiry  whether  I  spoke  good  French,  or  if  I 
happened  to  know  some  pretty  young  woman 


I 


c 


LEAVING   THE  CITY  13 

on  board  who  did,  as  he  was  modestly  anxious 
to  perfect  his  own  accent  during  the  voyage. 

When  I  had  freed  myself  from  his  atten- 
tions the  Minnehaha,  girding  up  her  sinews, 
had  turned  about  in  mid-stream,  pointing 
down  the  Hudson.  The  tugs  cutting  loose  moved 
in  advance  on  either  flank,  puffy  and  consequential 
escorts  to  their  big  sister  steamer  starting  forth 
on  her  maiden  trip.  She  was  more  a  sturdy  Eng- 
lish lass  than  the  lithe  and  laughing  Indian  maiden 
her  namesake.  Her  buxom  sides  like  a^  country 
beauty's  towrered  above  city  ferry  boat  and  excur- 
sion steamer,  displaying  her  dimensions  proudly 
and  to  advantage  beside  the  leaner  flanks  of  the 
"fast  liners."  It  was  a  bright,  crisp  summer 
morning.  The  hum  and  whistle  of  the  great  city 
had  scarce  begun  as  the  cliff  dwellings  of  Man- 
hattan went  down  on  the  sky  line.  The  Bridge 
became  a  distant  cobweb  in  the  clouds.  The  pilot 
was  taken  up,  and  when  the  green  banks  of  the 
Narrows  and  the  sandy  spit  of  the  Hook  had  been 
passed,  he  was  dropped  with  the  last  messages  for 
home,  and  we  sailed  on  still  watching  with  a  more 


14  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

tender  interest  the  receding  lines  of  shore. 

Our  steamer,  English  built,  flies  the  British 
colors,  but  with  her  name  she  should  be  an  Amer- 
ican vessel.  Her  captain,  officers  and  crew  are 
stalwart  young  English  sailors  selected  for  their 
skill  and  service,  though  the  stockholders  are 
mostly  Americans,  with  an  American  president, 
Bernard  M.  Baker  of  Baltimore.  Plain  John  Rob- 
inson, the  captain,  large,  hearty  and  robust 
in  build  and  with  a  flush  of  good  American  beef 
in  his  wholesome  and  genial  features,  grew 
in  authority  as  he  paced  the  Captain's  Bridge. 
The  engineer,  one  of  those  cautious,  careful 
Scotchmen  whom  Kipling  has  limned,  had  a  sug- 
gestion of  Admiral  Sampson  in  his  paler  features. 
There  were  less  than  a  hundred  cabin  passengers, 
a  great  family  party,  quartered  with  all  modern 
comforts — and  no  steerage;  in  the  place  of  the 
steerage  at  the  stern,  where  all  odors  were  swept 
behind  to  sea,  were  stalls  for  the  horses  and  cattle. 
The  Minnehaha  was  laden,  we  were  told, 
with  one  of  the  largest  cargoes  that  ever  left 
American  shores.  Stored  away  within  her  capa- 


OFF  SANDY  HOOK  15 

cious  iron  caverns  were  grain  and  corn  by  the 
hundred  thousand  bushels,  and  tons  of  cotton; 
troops  of  horses,  many  of  them  groomed  and  fed 
as  more  priceless  than  the  human  freight,  and  a 
drove  of  a  thousand  cattle  from  the  western 
plains  occupied  the  stalls. 

A  vast  floating  warehouse  is  the  modern  steam- 
er, and  this  one  of  the  greatest  of  them,  whose 
stores  would  provision  an  army  or  ransom  a  city. 
These  huge  steel  trusses  and  broad  iron  plates 
must  be  touched  with  Arabian  magic  to  float  as 
feathers  over  the  water,  when,  of  themselves, 
they  would  plunge  like  cannon-shot  to  the  bot- 
tomless depths  of  the  ocean.  The  Minnehaha 
carries  her  burden  on  this,  her  maiden  trip,  as 
buoyantly  as  a  birch  canoe  would  carry  an  Indian 
maid.  From  her  bows  the  salt,  green  waves  curl 
with  low  murmurs,  lapping  and  caressing  her 
dark  sides.  Smoothly  she  cleaves  the  billows 
with  no  conscious  strain  or  vibration,  as  a  river 
steamer  glides  through  the  passes  of  the  Hudson 
Highlands.  In  the  quiet  of  the  evening  when  the 
low  of  the  "moo  cow/7  the  soft  breath  of  kine,  and 


16  TEN  DAYS   ABROAD 

the  fresh  odor  of  hay,  came  from  the  stalls  on  the 
rear  deck,  it  was  not  difficult  to  believe  these  rol- 
ling, sapphire  waters  an  illusion — that  they  were 
fields  of  rustling  grain  or  purple  alfalfa.  Then 
the  first  sunset  stretched  a  band  of  shell  pink  half 
way  around  the  horizon  encompassing-  this  wav- 
ing plain,  and  the  thin,  gold  crescent  of  the  new 
moon  over  the  spot  where  the  sun  had  sunk, 
pointed  the  direction  of  the  distant  city  and  the 
port  we  had  left. 

The  passengers  do  not  enter  at  once  upon  a 
familiar  footing.  Your  Anglo-Saxon  whether 
English  or  American  is  ever  slow  in  warming  up 
the  cockles  of  his  heart.  But  my  German 
acquaintance  in  lieu  of  his  choice  for  a  French 
companion,  secured  others  of  his  own  sex 
with  whom  he  walked  the  deck  cheerfully  in  sun- 
shine and  shade,  their  faces  presently  glowing 
with  a  rich  vermilion,  to  peal  in  flakes  a  little 
later  like  the  bursting  jackets  of  well  boiled  po- 
tatoes. The  dining  table  established  more  cordial 
relations.  Its  varied  and  enticing  menu  of  fish 
and  fowl,  "Hazel  Hen,"  "Red  Deer,"  and  other 


THE  CAPTAIN'S   TABLE  17 

delicacies,  was  calculated  to  arouse  epicurean 
curiosity,  though  somewhat  gamey  for  ocean 
diet.  Mark  Twain  and  David  Harum  were 
favorite  topics  with  the  Captain.  His  table  was 
a  social  center;  and  when  he  told  his  stories,  his 
sides  shook,  the  dishes  rattled,  and  we  all  joined 
the  laughter  in  sheer  sympathy.  On  Sunday 
morning  he  read  the  Episcopal  service,  his  voice 
taking  a  deeper-toned  gravity,  while  the  gold  lace 
and  uniform  gave  dignity  to  his  figure,  and  a 
sense  of  greater  security  and  confidence.  His 
desk  was  draped  for  the  occasion  with  the  British 
flag,  and  the  desk  of  the  Purser  who  read  part  of 
the  service,  and  who  was  an  American  from  Bal- 
timore, was  hung  with  the  American  colors. 

Sunday  on  shipboard  at  sea  has  an  interest  of 
its  own.  And  an  Episcopal  service  always  seems 
to  find  an  English  audience  in  sympathy,  and 
familiar  with  it.  The  ranchman  from  the  plains, 
with  long,  black  mustaches,  the  grizzly-browed 
Irish-American  from  the  Klondike  returning  to 
visit  his  early  home,  and  the  elderly  nurse  from 
Central  America,  an  infant  in  her  arms,  standing 


i8  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

at  the  doorway  in  the  background — all  without 
books — chanted  the  responses  fervently  in  chorus 
with  the  passengers.  The  plea  for  Queen 
Victoria's  health  and  welfare,  and  the  Royal 
family's,  was  accompanied  with  that  for  the 
President  of  the  United  States,  to  which  good 
Americans  could  subscribe. 

This  day  and  hour  the  liturgy  is  chanted 
around  the  globe  on  every  land  and  sea  where 
the  British  colors  fly.  Not  always,  observed  a 
traveler  on  deck  afterward,  under  American  or 
other  national  ensigns,  but  on  British  steamers  it 
has  become  a  custom,  if  it  is  not  a  requirement. 
The  old  English  liturgists  in  the  Prayer  Book 
appear  to  have  re-echoed  the  tone  and  the  rhythm 
of  the  Psalms.  And  in  the  "Recessional,"  it  seemed 
at  this  moment,  Kipling  has  caught  his  refrain 
from  the  strong  and  serious  old  Puritan  side,  if 
it  is  the  Psalm-singing  side,  of  English  or  Anglo- 
Saxon  nature,  which  finds  response  and  its 
self-restraining  influence  here. 

All  around  the  saloon  of  the  steamer,  set  in 
its  paneled  walls  of  dark  oak,  were  pictures  of 


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SUNDAY    ON  SHIPBOARD  ig 

American  scenery,  outlined  in  colors  on  the  thick 
window  crystal  of  the  port  casements — Brooklyn 
Bridge,  Bartholdi  Statue,  views  from  Central 
Park,  Minneapolis,  Baltimore  and  Chicago.  That 
Sunday  morning  was  clear,  the  skies  blue,  the 
sun  bright,  the  ocean  mild  and  peaceful — no 
whisper  in  the  waves  of  the  fierce  strifes  on  its 
distant  African  or  Chinese  coasts ;  no  newspapers 
or  other  human  contrivance  to  disturb  the  calm, 
eternal  sway  of  Nature.  A  whale  plunged  across 
our  course  spouting  its  spray,  as  if  to  vie  with 
the  Minnehaha's  bow,  or  exchange  salute  with 
a  bigger  sister  denizen  of  the  deep,  while  the 
porpoises  gamboled  about  the  ship's  sides  in 
company,  rubbing  their  backs  fearlessly,  the 
mariner  told  the  landsmen,  against  her  prow, 
as  if  her  construction  were  for  the  sole  mission 
of  their  fraternal  gratification. 

A  sense  of  unlimited  sunshine,  restfulness  and 
relaxation  filled  the  atmosphere.  The  wash  of 
the  sea  and  the  throbbing  pulsations  of  the 
steamer  were  the  purring  osculations  of  some 
mighty,  domesticated  feline.  To  the  rhythm  of 


20  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

the  organ  music,  to  the  song  and  chanted  re- 
sponses of  this  morning  service,  one  could  easily 
fancy  our  great,  laden  argosy  swinging  gently; 
and  the  eye  passing  outward  and  far  through 
the  open,  swaying  ports,  framed  in  the  dark  oak 
paneling,  caught  glimpses  of  sky  and  sea,  sun-lit 
cloud  and  changing  water — marine  masterpieces 
more  wonderful  than  those  which  hang  in  the 
famous  galleries  of  earth. 


II 


IN    MID    OCEAN 

I  OR  two  days  the  Minnehaha  followed 
a  course  due  east  from  New  York. 
Then  she  turned  northeast  on  the 
great  sea,  a  direction  which  the  daily 
chart  indicated  would  bring  us  at  the  expiration 
of  a  week,  near  to  the  entrance  of  the  English 
Channel.  Our  bugler  in  his  white-duck  jacket 
which  he  always  donned  at  such  times,  roused 
us  early  in  the  mornings,  winding  the  reveille, 
through  the  long  aisles  of  the  cabin,  repeating 
the  strain  with  variations  half  an  hour  later.  On 
German  lines  it  was  said,  the  custom  is  to  vary 


22  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

those  calls  with  simple,  folk-lore  airs  —  all  of 
which  are  pleasanter  sounds  than  a  jangling  bell, 
or  the  barbarous  din  of  the  copper  tom-tom. 
Many  of  the  passengers  are  out  on  deck  before 
breakfast  for  exercise.  One  who  is  a  member 
of  a  camera  club  is  up  at  sunrise,  always  with 
his  camera,  hoping  to  catch  a  near  broadside  at 
a  whale  or  take  the  porpoises  in  the  act  of 
scratching  their  backs  on  the  Minnehaha's  bows 
— like  hogs  on  a  rail  fence  in  the  country.  His 
failures  do  not  shake  his  confident  hopes  of 
success  on  the  return  voyage,  and  recording  the 
triumph  of  the  year  in  his  club. 

The  first  days  at  sea  are  full  of  speculation 
and  day  dreams  to  which  the  gentle  rocking  of 
the  steamer  is  conducive.  They  are  curious 
composites  of  home  fancies,  toil  and  care,  out 
from  which  you  start  of  a  sudden  in  surprise  at 
the  far-stretching  waves,  only  to  sink  back  with 
fresh  comfort  and  the  relaxation  of  a  warm 
sun  bath.  Amid  this  novelty  of  nothing  to  do 
landsmen  who  have  escaped  the  routine  and 
burden  of  life  ashore,  pay  little  heed  to  the  throng 


NOTHING    TO    DO  25 

of  passengers.  The  Captain's  chart  is  the  official 
guide,  and  one  acquires  an  implicit  trust  in  the 
officer  who  can  pick  his  way  under  the  stars  and 
sun  with  no  other  direction.  No  letters  or  tele- 
grams can  reach  the  voyager.  Dates  fail  to  inter- 
est and  are  disregarded.  Even  days  of  the  week 
become  confused  amid  the  never  ceasing  wash  of 
these  waves  whose  rich,  cobalt  hues,  deeper 
than  the  blue  of  skies  above,  have  a 
restful  fascination.  Athwart  our  pathway  the 
billows  swell  up  suddenly  from  the  deep  as 
if  another  Aphrodite  would  issue  forth  upon 
them.  Then  they  fall  away  in  a  cabalistic  tracery, 
to  creep  and  cling  an  azure  gelatine  in  fantastic 
shapes — curling  from  violet  ringlets  to  sprays 
of  delicate  greens,  such  as  tint  the  early  lawns  in 
April. 

The  eye  wanders  over  the  broad  expanse  with 
expectation  and  mystery  in  every  incident.  A 
fly  speck  may  prove  a  sail  and  bring  all  on  deck 
to  speculate  and  wonder.  One  remembers  long 
voyages  and  feels  a  higher  respect  for  the  Norse 
Sea-kings  and  the  Pilgrim  Fathers.  Then  human 


26  TEN  DAYS   ABROAD 

interest  returns,  and  fellow-voyagers,  flushed 
with  the  sun  and  sea,  show  kinship  and  personal 
characteristics.  Strange  rumors  arise  in  the 
cabin  on  the  simplest  topics,  pure  products  of 
unconscious  cerebration,  says  our  Southern  Pro- 
fessor. Several  bridal  couples  who  are  wholly 
self-centered  during  most  of  the  trip,  afford  more 
material  interest.  One  of  the  bridegrooms,  a 
young  Englishman,  is  carrying  a  pretty  American 
bride  to  his  paternal  home  in  London,  near  Hyde 
Park.  She  is  a  willing  prisoner,  for  it  is  their 
wedding  trip;  the  home  reception  is  to  be  an 
international  family  affair  in  which  English  and 
American  colors  are  to  blend,  and  decorate.  He 
is  a  philological  study  for  the  "Professor,"  who 
having  been  born  at  a  distance  from  the  "Bow- 
bells,"  cannot  satisfactorily  account  for  those 
peculiar  inflections  on  the  "ai,"  when  our  English 
fellow  passenger  insists  that  the  steamer  "syles" 
beautifully,  and  that  the  voyage  is  a  complete 
"bryne"  rest. 

The  bridegroom's  mother  and  a  younger  sister 
who  attended  the  wedding,  are  returning  with 


AN  ENGLISH  BRIDESMAID  27 

him ;  the  sister,  a  pleasing  young  girl  with  Dolly 
Varden  pink  and  white  cheeks  and  naive  English 
manners,  is  a  source  of  constant  interest  to  the 
ladies.  Six  weeks  of  social  life  in  an  American 
city  were  a  revelation  to  her  London  ideas. 
American  boys,  always  burdened  with  Huyler's 
candy  and  other  sweets,  were  an  unfailing  wonder 
and  admiration  to  her,  as  doubtless  her  pink 
cheeks  were  to  them,  from  which  they  christened 
her  "peaches  and  cream."  She  carries  back  to 
her  London  home  new,  agreeable,  and  graphic 
impressions  of  Yankee  life  that  will,  I  imagine, 
incline  her  to  revisit  her  sister's  home,  and, 
perhaps,  to  take  out  naturalization  papers. 

Our  first  encounter  in  mid-ocean  after  we  had 
been  several  days  without  sight  of  any  craft,  was 
one  of  the  important  events  of  the  trip.  A  bell 
from  the  look  out  on  the  foremast  gave  notice 
of  some  object  ahead, — a  little  time  elapsed  be- 
fore it  was  visible  on  deck.  The  object  proved  to 
be  a  steamer  with  the  black  smoke  issuing  at 
intervals  from  a  single  funnel,  and,  on  nearer 
view  as  she  approached  us,  her  movements  were 


28  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

seen  to  be  so  wavering  as  to  excite  much 
wonder  and  comment.  It  seemed  quite  natural 
to  ask  if  she  were  in  distress  or  need,  but  the 
Captain  after  a  short  inspection  dropped  his 
glasses  and  turned  away. 

"Will  you  not  speak  to  her?"  appealed  one 
sympathetic  young  woman. 

"You  would  not  speak  unnecessarily  to  a 
beggar  whom  you  pass  on  the  street/'  he  replied 
pleasantly. 

"Is  she  a  beggar,  Captain?  Can  you  tell?" 
exclaimed  the  passenger  eagerly  as  a  group 
gathered  about  them. 

"She  is  only  an  Ocean  Tramp,"  he  replied; 
which  seemed  to  settle  the  issue,  as  ocean  caste 
is  strong,  and  the  Tramp  passed  on  behind  us, 
and  presently  out  of  vision. 

On  the  seventh  day  out  sea  gulls  reappeared 
in  the  steamer's  wake,  though  the  Captain  said 
that  land  was  still  a  thousand  miles  away ;  but 
the  cattle  became  uneasy  in  their  stalls  next 
morning,  lowing  like  distant  fog  horns,  and  the 
copper-faced  mariner  who  was  ever  trotting  side- 


THE   CATTLE   SCENT  LAND  29 

ways — a  kind  of  marine  or  crab-like  fashion — 
to  and  from  the  Captain's  Bridge,  observed 
that  it  was  the  custom  of  cattle  to  bellow  when 
they  scented  land,  "which  they  knew  afor'  the 
Captain  or  anyone  else."  One  bright,  clear 
morning  the  bugler  announced  land  with  a 
flourish  of  trumpet  that  brought  everyone  to  his 
feet — the  first  land,  the  Scilly  Islands.  Then  he 
played  the  "Star-Spangled  Banner,"  whose  famil- 
iar strains,  floating  out  upon  the  British  waters, 
prompted  hearty  cheers;  and  all  who  could  sing 
shouted  "God  save  the  Queen"  or  "America," 
without  regard  for  words,  as  we  entered  the 
English  Channel. 

Looming  up  presently,  dark  and  formidable 
in  the  distance,  appeared  a  steamer,  growing 
in  bulk  each  moment  as  she  bore  down  upon  us 
belching  turgid  thunder  cloud  in  tumbling 
masses,  white  where  the  sun  struck  them,  but 
black  and  trailing  far,  astern,  a  besom  of  destruc- 
tion— a  great  English  cruiser  or  battleship — the 
"Terrible"  or  some  other  name  equally  appro- 
priate. At  close  quarters  she  turned  away  after 


30  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

a  glance,  satisfied  with  our  inoffensive  appearance, 
to  continue  her  silent  patrol  like  some  lone  and 
giant  Titan  guarding  this  open  water-gate  of 
British  commerce  even  in  time  of  peace. 

On  our  left  directly,  within  easy  gunshot  lay 
the  coast  of  England — Devon,  where  Drake  and 
Raleigh  manned  their  fleets ;  back  of  it  the  hills 
were  green  about  the  home  of  Lorna  Doone  and 
John  Ridd.  We  rounded  the  Isle  of  Wight,  and 
beyond  a  distant  glimpse  of  France  appeared, 
low  on  the  horizon.  Every  new  prospect  had 
its  story — stories  which  have  marked  the  course 
of  the  world's  modern  history;  and  these  same 
fitful,  chopping  seas,  that  may  have  paled  the 
cheek  of  the  "mighty"  Julius,  or  turned  the 
stomach  of  William  the  Norman,  still  exact  liberal 
tribute  of  the  traveler. 

Those  of  our  English  fellow  travelers  who  had 
been  hitherto  undemonstrative,  now  gathered  in 
a  group  on  deck,  shouting  and  reciting  the  ballad 
of  "The  White  Ship"  with  boyish  glee  at  sight 
of  the  white  chalk  cliffs  tipped  with  the  laurel 
green  of  centuries.  Their  Yankee  cousins  looked 


UP   THE   THAMES  31 

on  quietly,  not  oblivious  of  kinship,  and  not 
unconscious  of  a  fellow  pride  in  this  patriotic 
fervor.  Off  Goodwin  Sands,  which  a  thou- 
sand years  ago  was  an  island  in  the  Channel, 
and  where  the  skeletons  of  many  ships  are 
gathered  each  year,  we  passed  the  light  ship  styled 
significantly  "The  Black  Death."  Then  we 
entered  between  the  low-lying  shores  of  the 
Thames.  The  shipping  increased,  and  houses 
were  more  numerous  as  we  advanced  up  the 
stream  toward  London,  and  the  marshy  banks 
became  more  slimy  where  Daniel  Quilp's  ugly 
figure  left  by  the  tide,  found  a  resting  place. 

Two  hours'  sail  up  the  Thames  brought  us 
to  Tilbury,  where  the  ship's  docks  are  located, 
still  a  score  of  miles  below  London.  It  was  at 
Tilbury  that  Queen  Elizabeth  appeared  in  helmet 
and  corselet  at  the  head  of  the  English  army 
which  gathered  to  meet  the  Armada;  when 
she  declared  in  blunt  fashion  that  she  had 
"the  stomach  as  well  as  the  heart  of  a  king,  and 
would  fight  like  one  too — "  Tilbury  heard 
the  boom  of  the  last  hostile  cannon,  discharged 


32  TEN  DAYS   ABROAD 

on  Britain's  shores,  two  centuries  ago,  when  the 
Dutchman  Van  Tromp,  with  a  broom  at  his 
masthead,  sailed  up  the  Thames,  and  swept  the 
British  seas. 

Perhaps  there  is  still  a  something  in  the 
atmosphere  of  Good  Queen  Bess,  that  infected 
the  stomach,  or  the  nature  of  our  steamer. 
Special  preparation  had  been  made  for  the 
reception  of  the  Minnehaha  in  honor  of  her 
dimensions,  the  great  cargo  she  brought  and  her 
maiden  trip.  Up  to  this  she  had  conducted 
herself  in  a  most  becoming  and  shiplike  manner. 
Now  for  the  first  time  she  displayed  that  feminine 
caprice  and  perversity  to  which  it  appears  the  sex 
with  all  its  admirable  qualities,  irrespective  of 
race  or  station,  is  liable  on  occasions.  For  an 
interval  she  resisted  every  persuasion  to  draw  her 
into  dock;  setting  back  doggedly  and  turning 
up  the  black  Thames  mud  with  her  bottom  like 
an  enormous  ploughshare;  snapping  cables  and 
baffling  the  combined  efforts  of  a  flotilla  of 
tugs  and  a  swarm  of  longshoremen.  Then 
of  her  own  accord  she  came  forward,  broke  all 


IN  A   TANTRUM  33 

restraint,  and  picked  up  from  the  rails  as  though 
she  mistook  them  for  hairpins,  the  great,  striding 
steel  cranes,  which  she  bent  and  crumpled 
willfully,  dropping  them  with  crash  and  havoc 
into  the  warehouse  sheds  to  spread  panic  among 
the  longshoremen. 

At  last,  her  tantrum  over,  we  were  safely 
docked,  and  once  more  on  solid  earth.  The 
father  of  our  English  bridegroom,  a  sturdy 
Englishman,  was  waiting  to  greet  his  wedding 
party  with  a  delegation  of  London  friends,  our 
first  glimpse  of  Londoners  on  their  native  heath. 
They  were  in  holiday  attire ;  some  of  them  carried 
thick  sticks,  large  bouquets  on  their  breasts,  with 
other  larger  bouquets  in  their  hands  for  the 
English  bridesmaid  and  the  American  bride. 

Our  luggage  was  soon  lifted  ashore.  Last 
farewells  were  exchanged  between  fellow  trav- 
elers. We  were  packed  into  compartment  cars, 
and  as  the  train  drew  out  many  regretful  adieus 
were  still  waving  toward  the  dock  where  the 
Minnehaha  would  lie  until  her  cargo  had  been 
disgorged — her  maiden  voyage  done,  and  her 


34  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

swelling  outlines  rested  peacefully  now,  on  the 
murky  bosom  of  the  Thames,  like  the  form  of 
some  sea-cow  giantess,  enthralled  by  the  genii 
of  commerce  to  delve  and  carry.  Over  trim 
country  roads  our  train  scurried  away,  through 
suburban  blocks  and  rows  of  precise,  two-story 
brick  dwellings  decorated  with  jaunty  chimney 
pots,  into  the  heart  of  London  town  at  Fenchurch 
Street  Station. 


Ill 


IN  LONDON  TOWN 

Y  window  in  Morley's  Hotel  looked  out 
on  Trafalgar  Square,  where  the 
statue  of  Nelson  towers  high  over 
London  house-tops.  The  tall  granite 
shaft  and  the  statue  on  its  summit  are  grim  with 
smoke  and  fog  stains,  but  London  has  no  twenty- 
story  sky-scrapers  to  dwarf  its  monuments  and 
throw  them  into  shadow,  There  is  not  a  patch  of 
green  or  a  tree  in  the  Square  which  is  dedicated 
wholly  to  war  and  triumphs.  Two  fountains 
play  amid  the  group  of  heroic  figures  the  latest 
of  which  is  that  of  General  Gordon,  and  space  yet 


36  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

remains  for  another,  perhaps  of  "Little  Bobs" 
or  of  Kitchener,  when  he  has  completed  the 
duty  expected  of  him,  restored  peace  to  the 
empire,  and  won  dukedoms  and  monuments.  Most 
impressive  of  all  to  me  with  new  significance 
and  art  at  every  view,  were  those  four  mighty 
Landseer's  lions  in  bronze  at  the  base  of  the 
Nelson  shaft,  reposing  as  in  life,  with  force  and 
majesty,  symbolic  of  British  power. 

A  reminder  of  green  pastures  that  once  were 
here  comes  with  the  bells  from  St.  Martin's-in- 
the-Fields  a  block  away,  rousing  me  early. 
Pretty  Nell  Gwynne  is  buried  there — and  Jack 
Sheppard,  too,  I  was  told — though  St.  Martin's 
has  not  been  in  the  fields  since  the  days  of  Ad- 
dison  and  Dean  Swift;  but  once  every  week  for 
two  hundred  years,  as  the  city  grew  up  around 
it,  through  some  lingering  legacy  or  devotion, 
St.  Martin's  bells  were  tolled  and  still  are  tolled 
for  Nell  Gwynne. 

A  clatter  of  feet  and  the  "baa"  of  sheep  further 
suggest  the  fields  as  a  flock  of  Southdown  mut- 
ton is  crowded  past  to  the  shambles.  Later  come 


LONDON   STREET    TRAFFIC  37 

the  creaking  of  trucks  and  the  tramp  of  the  mas- 
sive Normandy  horses.  Then  the  rattle  of  stages 
and  cabs,  the  cries  of  the  drivers,  and  one  of  the 
great  streams  of  London  traffic  pours  forth  into 
the  Strand.  That  continuous  roll  of  vehicles  on 
the  principal  streets  from  morning  until  midnight 
is  one  of  the  London  sights.  All  color  combina- 
tions are  exhausted  to  distinguish  the  different 
stage  lines.  I  wonder  if  the  man  lives  who  knows 
all  these  lines.  The  head  of  old  Shillaber  who 
introduced  stages,  would  be  dazed  if  he  could 
see  his  progeny  to-day;  such  deliberate  streams 
with  up  and  down  currents,  hansoms  and  every 
kind  of  go-cart — rarely  getting  into  a  tangle  or 
running  over  the  bewildered  pedestrian,  but  keep- 
ing up,  hour  after  hour,  the  same  steady  jog-trot. 
One  wonders  what  New  York  would  do  with 
its  enormous  elevated  and  surface  traffic  turned 
into  'busses  and  cabs  to  jam  the  streets  from  the 
Battery  to  Harlem,  and  bring  business  to  a  stand- 
still. They  have  underground  steam  and  electric 
roads,  and  the  last  with  American  cars  and  en- 
gines is  making  London  talk  of  rapid  transit  and 


38  TEN  DAYS   ABROAD 

open  its  eyes.  I  should  think  it  must  come  soon. 
Perhaps  these  are  the  beginning,  and  a  pity,  too, 
that  is  to  sweep  away  the  picturesque  procession 
of  stages  into  the  limbo  of  old  stage  coaches.  But 
all  the  rattle  of  London  traffic  does  not  strain  the 
nerves  like  the  screech  of  Elevated  car  wheels  or 
the  clang  of  a  trolley  gong. 

Trafalgar  Square  shares  with  Charing  Cross 
of  which  it  has  come  to  be  a  part,  distinction 
as  one  of  London's  great  centers.  Somewhere 
Kipling  has  named  Charing  Cross  with  Suez 
Canal  as  one  of  the  great  gateways  of  the  modern 
wrorld, — if  you  wait  long  enough,  he  whom  you 
are  waiting  for  is  sure  to  come  in  the  passing 
human  throng  from  all  corners  of  the  earth.  The 
volume  is  not  greater,  if  so  large,  as  that  at 
Brooklyn  Bridge  night  and  day;  and  the  Nar- 
rows at  the  New  York  Bay  is  another  even 
greater  world's  gateway;  but  its  memories  in 
which  all  the  others  are  young,  have  made  the 
modern  world,  and  Charing  Cross.  These  spring 
up  before  you  as  if  in  life,  at  every  turn  on  Lon- 
don street  corners,  to  picture  the  past.  The  Cross 


IN    MEMORY    OF    A    QUEEN  43 

keeps  alive  the  memory  of  that  Queen  Eleanor, 
the  mother  of  Plantagenets  and  the  wife  of  the 
first  Edward  of  England  whose  death  was  the 
first  great  national  sorrow  for  an  English  queen. 
Eleanor's  crosses  where  her  body  rested  in  the 
funeral  march  are  still  maintained  after  600 
years;  that  in  front  of  the  Charing  Cross  Rail- 
way Station  being  the  most  elaborate  of  them 
all. 

No  panorama,  I  know,  is  like  that  scene  on  a 
'bus  from  Charing  Cross  or  Westminster  Abbey 
to  St.  Paul's.  The  whole  world  of  English  fact 
and  story  has  mingled  with  the  crowds  upon 
these  streets,  since  mad  Piers  Ploughman  stalked 
in  russet  Lollard  garb,  and  wailed  his  sounds 
of  mournful  antiphon  along  the  unfriendly 
Strand.  Chaucer  was  clerk  for  the  crown  near 
Charing  Cross  from  which  pilgrims  still  start  for 
Canterbury.  Ben  Jonson  was  born  there,  and 
lived  near  at  hand  as  secretary  of  Lord  Bacon.  All 
London,  old  and  new,  must  have  lived  about  it 
sometime.  Just  around  on  the  Strand  Mr.  Pick- 
wick and  the  Club  started  forth  a-stage  top  on 


44  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

a  memorable  journey,  and  encountered  Mr. 
Alfred  Jingle  with  his  lively  anecdote  of  the  de- 
capitated head  of  the  family,  and  the  sandwich. 
It  needs  no  vivid  fancy  to  get  glimpses  of  old 
Pepys  yet ;  to  see  Dr.  Johnson's  burly  figure 
pushing  through  the  throng,  or  Colonel  New- 
come  erect  and  martial,  coming  from  the  Gray 
Friars.  London  clings  to  all  fashions  of  dress 
— old  and  new — it  does  not  put  on  straw  hats 
as  one  man  in  June  to  strike  them  off  in  Sep- 
tember. 

But  even  London  has  its  changes,  and  so  many 
since  Mr.  Pickwick's  time  that  Dickens  himself, 
Walter  Besant  says,  would  scarcely  know  it 
now.  The  'busman,  if  anyone,  knows  it  to-day: 

"Osk  me  wot  ye  likes,"  he  responded,  taking 
my  sixpence,  while  he  deftly  held  the  reins  with 
two  fingers  of  one  hand,  and  so  dexterously 
extracted  a  cigarette  from  his  pockets  with  the 
other,  and  lighted  it,  his  hat  tipped  back,  and  his 
eye  twinkling  beside  the  large  ruddy  nose,  that 
I  was  tempted  to  "osk"  if  he  were  of  any  kin 
to  the  famous  Weller  family,  spelled  with  a  V. 


DIRTY  DICK'S  45 

"'Ave'e  been  to  Dirty  Dick's,  Uncle  John?" 
he  continued. 

I  did  not  know  of  that  celebrity  who,  he  ex- 
plained, had  "kep"  a  London  public  'ouse  a 
hundred  years  or  so  ago,  and  who  had  a  romance 
of  his  own.  On  his  wedding  day  his  bride  died, 
after  which  Dirty  Dick  never  washed  or  shaved 
"  'isself,"  but  locked  up  the  room  where 
the  wedding  feast  was  prepared,  and  it  was 
eaten  by  the  rats.  Then,  in  a  fit  of  remorse, 
he  captured  all  the  rats  and  cats  and  dogs  he 
could  lay  hold  of  ever  afterward,  nailing  them 
up  on  the  walls  of  his  "public  'ouse/'  where  they 
still  remain,  though  Dirty  Dick  is  long  dead  and 
was  himself  put  away  in  a  coffin. 

At  the  end  of  his  route,  near  Whitechapel,  my 
'busman  turned  out  and  guided  me  to  Dirty 
Dick's,  which  stands  on  a  corner  near  Bishops- 
gate,  one  of  those  "gin  palaces"  whose  proprietor 
with  an  eye  to  business,  has  made  the  most  of 
his  gruesome  and  posthumous  advertisement. 
The  walls  within  were  high,  like  a  chapel,  and 
dark;  there  were  flaring  lights,  and  in  the  reces- 


46  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

ses  among  the  liquor  casks,  hung  the  dried  mum- 
mies of  dogs  and  cats  by  the  score,  nailed  up  like 
smoked  herring  and  decorated  with  long  festoons 
of  cobweb.  The  crowd  in  the  place  was  no  less 
remarkable,  filling  it  to  the  doorway,  as  in  most 
London  "gin  palaces/'  with  men,  women,  babies, 
children  in  arms — all  drinking. 

Whitechapel  itself  was  a  fairly  respectable 
thoroughfare.  The  narrow  street  and  low  stone 
dwellings  were  clean — there  were  no  tall  tene- 
ments or  "double  deckers,"  but  one  felt  the 
absence  of  those  broad  and  sightly  public 
school  structures  which  in  New  York  and 
other  American  cities  vary  and  brighten  the  street 
outlines,  and  help  to  leaven  the  multitudes  from 
foreign  lands.  The  population  seemed  thrifty 
and  tidy;  little  shop  windows  gave  a  glimpse  of 
its  needs,  and  the  illustrated  Police  Budget  and 
popular  ballads  some  idea  of  its  mental  aspir- 
ations, which  have  a  love  of  the  horrible  that 
comes  down  from  the  Tower  and  Richard  III. 
The  Boer  war  divides  the  interest  now.  On  this 
topic  there  was  some  remarkable  literature,  and 


THE    WHITECHAPEL    DISTRICT  47 

in  every  window  the  "Absent  Minded  Beggar" 
seemed  the  favorite  poem  here  if  it  is  not 
so  in  higher  London  circles. 

There  were  no  idlers  lolling  over  the  sidewalks 
in  Whitechapel,  such  as  may  be  seen  any  day 
in  Mott  Street,  or  in  any  of  the  several  foreign 
quarters  of  New  York.  The  London  poor  live 
on  much  less  than  the  poor  in  American  cities, 
and  that  less  seems  to  be  much  harder  to  get  in 
any  occupation.  So  it  is  carefully  watched  by 
workingmen's  unions,  and  a  man  who  is  laid  off 
for  sickness  takes  his  turn  in  getting  back  where 
he  can  earn  his  few  shillings  again.  One  can 
plainly  see  that  there  would  be  no  chance  here 
for  an  Emigration  Bureau.  Even  the  Italian, 
who  adapts  himself  to  every  vocation,  and  thrives 
in  competition  with  the  Jew,  would  starve  before 
a  foothold  was  secured.  Only  among  the 
women  in  the  last  stages  of  Nancy  Sykes,  but 
still  young,  did  I  see  on  the  streets  in  this  district 
many  evidences  of  bruises  and  dissipation,  the 
last  sad  evidence  before  the  work'us  or  the  river. 

"Them's  the  'Arriets,"  says  my  'busman  to  an 


48  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

inquiry.  "Hever  see  the  'Arriets  on  a  bloomin' 
bum  full  o'  ginger  gin,  Uncle  Jimmy  ?  Ven  they 
twists  up  their  back  'air,  an'  stretches  their  'ands 
luvin'  like  across  the  street,  an'  marches  down 
a-shoutin'  an'  singin'  like  a  hull  Salwation  band — 

'Karry  the  news  to  Lun'on  town ! 
Hoi,  karry  the  news  to  Moll-ee !' 

The  Bobby,  'e  shuts  'is  hye,  'e  do,  ven  'e  sees  'em 
comin',  an'  'e  'as  bissness  suddint,  wot  tykes 
him  raound  the  corner." 


IV 


OLD    LONDON    MEMORIES 


s 


EVERAL  public  school  buildings  were 
pointed  out  to  me  in  London,  but  their 
exteriors  were  like  brick  warehouses, 
hard,  plain  and  uninviting.  Much 
of  the  early  public  school  methods  adopted 
in  New  York  and  other  American  cities  was 
on  the  English  plan,  and  many  of  its  simpler 
features  still  remain  with  us,  but  we  have  de- 
veloped the  first  suggestions.  London  has  its 
Central  School  Board,  and  its  local  school 
trustees,  who  are  tenacious  of  their  rights.  It 
annually  expends  nearly  three  millions  sterling 


50  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

on  its  public  school  system,  but  the  general  public 
does  not  take  the  same  active  part  or  interest 
in  school  management,  as  with  us. 

There  are  schools  like  those  of  Eton  and 
Westminster  which  have  existed  for  centuries, 
but  for  the  few,  and  which  have  been  the  fore- 
runners of  the  modern  public  school.  That  of 
the  Blue  Coat  Boys,  with  its  curious  customs  and 
traditions,  goes  back  almost  to  Thomas  a  Becket. 
It  is  a  great  pile  of  gray  stone  with  an  inner 
open  court  quadrangle,  surrounded  by  long 
corridors  whose  pavements  are  worn  in  ruts  by 
the  school  boys  of  more  than  four  centuries ; 
and,  whose  ancient  vaulted  arches,  lead  to  the 
quaint,  old  buildings. 

About  800  boys  wear  the  Blue  Coat  colors — 
Richardson,  the  author  of  Clarissa,  was  one 
of  them,  so  also  were  Coleridge,  Charles  Lamb 
and  Leigh  Hunt.  Once  a  year,  during  Lent,  the 
boys  have  a  public  dinner  in  the  great  hall,  with 
the  Lord  Mayor,  the  Prince  of  Wales,  sometimes, 
and  other  distinguished  visitors  looking  on.  The 
meal  over,  the  boys  take  up  their  plates,  napkins 


THE    BLUE    COAT    BOYS  51 

and  candlesticks,  filing  out  in  procession,  two 
abreast,  with  profound  bows,  as  they  pass  before 
the  Lord  Mayor.  I  do  not  know  if  this  is  really 
so  solemn  an  affair  as  it  appears,  and  the  re- 
straints and  respect  for  years  and  authority  has 
its  better  side,  certainly,  and  a  lasting  influence; 
but  I  can  hardly  think  of  it  so  ceremonious  or 
impressive  at  home  where  even  the  public  school 
has  its  college  cries. 

Only  a  few  steps  from  the  Blue  Coats 
is  another  great  pile  of  gray  stone.  Its  little 
doors  and  barred  windows  issue  on  the  street 
through  the  thick  walls  of  Newgate,  where  the 
Jack  Sheppards  and  Dick  Turpins  met  their  fate. 
Within  them  Barnaby  Rudge  and  Maypole 
Hugh  were  confined,,  when  the  Gordon  mobs 
raged  outside.  I  was  glad  of  the  chance  to  see 
both  these  old  institutions,  for  Newgate  and  the 
Blue  Coats  too,  are  soon  to  go — to  be  moved  to 
the  suburbs,  making  way  for  modern  innovations. 
In  New  York  changes  come  so  soon  that  the 
moss  of  centuries  green  with  human  memories 
has  little  chance  to  form;  but,  big  as  it  is, 


52  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

every  thing  important  enough  to  attract  notice 
seems  to  leave  a  long  impress  in  London.  Crystal 
Palace  still  lingers  and  there  is  yet  a  Christy 
Hall  where  George  Christy's  negro  minstrels, 
one  of  the  earliest  entertainments  of  this  kind, 
was  a  prolonged  success  back  in  the  sixties.  In 
New  York  where  they  were  scarcely  less  popular, 
all  trace  and  even  memory  of  them  are  gone. 

Belgravia,  Holland  Park,  each  London  district 
has  its  own  associations,  but  it  is  in  the  City 
that  they  cluster  at  every  corner,  with  the 
accumulated  layers  of  many  centuries.  Cheapside 
and  the  Strand  are  the  early  "Boweries"  going 
far  back  to  the  first  trades  and  guilds.  The 
Monument  of  the  Great  Fire  and  the  Plague 
shoots  up  from  a  narrow,  antiquated  side  street. 
St.  Paul's  great  dome  swelling  into  view  at  every 
street  crossing  is  a  pantheon  recording  the 
eminent  crowd  of  names  and  deeds  upon  its  walls, 
and  a  landmark  against  the  sky  like  a  vast  air 
ship,  for  all  within  sound  of  its  bells — though 
from  London  Bridge,  through  the  fog  and  smoke, 
it  is  still  difficult  to  fix  a  site  for  the  New 


ST.    CLEMENTS  IN    MOURNING  53 

Zealander,  when  he  comes,  to  take  his  stand. 

St.  Bridges,  St.  Giles',  St.  Swithin's,  and  St. 
Clement  Danes  are  all  within  this  ancient  circle. 
Dr.  Johnson  attended  St.  Clement's  when  he 
resolved  sturdily  to  go  to  church  each  Sunday, 
and  "purify  his  soul,  by  communion  with  the 
Highest,"  and  his  voice  was  heard  in  the 
responses  above  all  others  within  its  walls.  St. 
Clement's  gets  its  name  from  the  Danes,  who 
remained  here  in  King  Alfred's  time.  Its  bell 
still  rings  at  midnight  as  when  Justice  Shallow 
and  Sir  John  Falstaff  heard  it,  though  rusty  and 
throaty  now  as  Sir  John's  voice  became,  when  he 
began  to  babble  of  green  fields,  as  his  legs  grew 
cold. 

St.  Clement's  was  in  part  mourning  the  after- 
noon when  I  saw  it  first,  for  the  loss  of  a  favorite 
Tom  cat.  Placards  written  in  a  trembling  hand 
on  note  paper  with  a  black  border,  and  fastened 
to  the  iron  pickets,  announced  the  "Tom  cat"  as 
strayed  or  stolen,  and  proffered  a  reward  of  five 
shillings  "without  questions"  for  his  return! 
Here  in  these  old  walls  amid  the  cloistered  past, 


54  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

where  the  traffic  of  the  Strand  rolls  around  with 
its  dull  roar  was  a  great  grief — a  fear,  perhaps, 
that  its  favorite  Tom  cat  had  been  taken  and  im- 
paled in  that  pantheon  of  "Dirty  Dick's/'  not  far 
away.  A  clerical  with  cap  and  gown,  and  blonde 
whiskers,  looking  anxiously  out  from  a  little 
doorway  beside  a  buttress,  seemed  chief  mourner. 
I  wondered  if  he  were  a  dean,  a  vicar,  or  a  canon. 
The  Tower  of  London  with  all  its  tragedies, 
with  its  crown  jewels,  and  sombre  relics,  and  its 
massive  and  time-eaten  walls  as  old  as  Christen- 
dom, had  to  me  a  modest,  retiring  aspect,  in  the 
midst  of  the  modern  Babel ; — like  some  rugged 
old  house  dog  which,  having  served  its  time,  John 
Bull  has  placed  in  the  background.  There  are 
pretty  green  spots  within  these  spacious  walls. 
The  volunteers  in  full  uniform  assemble  on  them 
for  inspection  before  going  to  or  returning  from 
camp  at  Aldershot.  Half-a-dozen  big  ravens, 
wise  enough  in  looks  to  pull  out  corks  with 
Barnaby's,  stalk  about  these  grounds  as  sentries, 
and  on  the  broad  plaza  outside  the  gates,  the 
crowd  of  men,  women  and  vehicles  that  wait  for 


W 
03 


0] 
O 

w 


TOMMY   ATKINS   AT   THE    TOWER        55 

Tommy  Atkins  to  appear  in  regimentals,  makes 
one  think  of  Bastile  mobs,  only  this  is  a  friendly 
crowd,  if  motley. 

Tommy  Atkins  is  the  bright  bit  of  color  on 
every  street  in  these  patriotic  days  pending  the 
the  South  African  war.  But  he  is  in  dead 
earnest.  See -him  in  his  red  coat,  chest  inflated, 
shoulders  squared — his  two-foot  stick  in  hand, 
his  little  red  cap  balanced  on  one  ear,  and  he  is 
the  prettiest  piece  of  comedy  off  the  stage.  You 
make  way  for  him  as  "one  of  the  finest,"  whether 
he  stands  six  feet  in  his  stockings  or  barely  five. 
The  telegraph  boy  fits  his  dress,  and  steps  like 
Tommy  Atkins;  and  when  he  appears  in  full 
parade,  in  regimentals,  with  fife  and  drum,  not 
only  the  small  boy,  but  men  and  women  march 
on  ahead,  in  the  mid-street,  as  an  escort.  This  is 
the  same  war- fever  that  we  had  a  year  or  two  ago, 
after  Dewey's  guns  were  heard  at  Manila. 

But  the  great  English  pantheon,  Westminster, 
one  cannot  grasp  in  a  passing  glance,  with  the 
broad  sweep  of  Westminster  Bridge  leading  to  it, 
the  storied  walls  of  Parliament  to  guard  it,  and 


56  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

"Big  Ben"  from  his  tower  to  sound  the  hour,  and 
"all's  well/'  night  and  day.  Longfellow's 
countrymen  had  laid  a  fresh  wreath  of  flowers  on 
his  bust  one  morning  when  I  was  there.  The 
American  poet  looks  out  upon  the  company  of 
Shakespeare,  Milton,  Thackeray,  and  Macaulay; 
and  beyond  into  the  dim  crypts  where  flooded  in 
the  mellow  glow  of  pictured  windows,  lie  the 
marble  effigies  of  kings,  queens  and  Warwicks. 
Just  within  the  main  entrance  of  the  Abbey  is  a 
marble  slab  over  Gladstone's  last  resting  place, 
and  a  few  feet  away  are  the  figures  of  Robert 
Peel  and  Disraeli,  whose  names  are  more  in  men's 
mouths  now  than  that  of  the  "grand  old  man/'  of 
ten  short  years  ago.  Close  by  is  a  fine  memorial  to 
Admiral  Sir  Peter  Warren,  who  died  before  our 
Revolution,  but  whose  memory  has  a  home  inter- 
est, as  his  estate  was  the  Van  Nest  place  in  the 
Ninth  Ward  of  New  York. 

One  cannot  avoid  recognition  that  American 
cities  are  built  on  more  modern  lines  and  with 
larger  grasp  than  the  greatest  of  these  old  world 
towns.  The  newer  cities  have  a  freer  hand,  and 


THE    FAME    OF    LONDON    BRIDGE         57 

build  as  large  as  Nature.  New  York  among  the 
oldest  of  these  New  World  centers,  with  old 
London  names  and  street  lines  in  its  older 
sections,  is  a  modern  city.  Its  buildings,  its 
bridges,  are  on  the  vaster  scale  of  the  rivers 
around  it;  beside  them  the  Thames  and  London 
Bridge  are  of  Lilliputian  proportions.  But  I 
wonder  if  the  many  millions  whom  these  greater 
bridges  shall  serve,  will  carry  down  their  repute 
for  centuries,  as  the  fame  of  London  Bridge  has 
been  for  good  and  ill,  until  it  has  a  place  in  the 
folk-lore  of  the  English  home  and  nation,  which 
the  children  sing  upon  the  street,  with  a  note  of 
apprehension  and  perhaps  of  deeper  significance  : 

"London  Bridge  is  falling  down;  falling  down! 
And  so  falls  my  lady !" 

On  the  last  night  in  London  I  sailed  up  the 
Thames  from  London  Bridge  to  Westminster — 
not  the  murky,  misty  Thames  of  Rogue  Rider- 
hood,  but  a  clear,  bright  and  beautiful  river  in 
the  moonlight  which  edged  with  silver  the  fine 
outlines  of  the  Parliament  buildings.  Gently 


58  TEN  DAYS   ABROAD 

through  the  air  in  mellow  strains,  as  from  golden 
memories  flashed  upon  the  night,  flowed  the 
"Normandy  Chimes"  from  an  Embankment  con- 
cert. These  banks  have  rung  with  mirth  and 
gaiety  from  Marlowe,  Greene  and  Shakespeare, 
that  merrymaking  company,  down  the  gamut  of 
English  song.  Queen  Bess'  barge  sailed  here 
with  music,  and  her  courtiers — and  over  in  St. 
Margaret's  near  the  Abbey  lies  the  headless 
corse  of  one  of  them,  that  Sir  Walter  who  soiled 
his  cloak  for  Elizabeth;  above  him  a  memorial 
is  inscribed  by  an  American  Minister  and  poet, 
from  the  Virginia  which  he  founded.  England 
has  learned  many  lessons  since  then  from  her 
triumphs  and  defeats,  and  has  more  than  once 
reversed  her  verdicts. 

Marochetti's  equestrian  statue  of  Richard  Coeur 
de  Lion,  in  front  of  the  House  of  Lords,  is  not  in 
favor  with  art  critics  now.  Richard  himself  has 
fallen  from  grace ;  but  to  me,  by  light  of  the  moon, 
the  heroic  horseman  is  a  goodly  sight,  full  of 
action,  a  personification  of  the  Richard  of  Ivan- 
hoe,  the  Sluggard  Knight  whose  teeth  made  grist 


OLIVER    CROMWELL 

W.  Hamo  Thorny  croft,  R.A. 


OLIVER    CROMWELL'S   PLACE  59 

of  Friar  Tuck's  dried  peas ;  and  something  more 
— a  strain  of  that  insane,  medieval  heroism 
of  the  Plantagenets,  the  Angevin  Fulkes.  He 
was  among  the  first  of  England's  great  soldiers, 
the  savage  in  him  little  tamed  to  harness.  The 
fervid  English  mood  has  subsided  in  that  other 
stern  figure  of  three  hundred  years  later,  though 
a  fanatic  glow  still  burns  beneath  the  surface. 
England's  great  soldier  in  plain  fact  and 
accomplishment,  whose  body  was  exhumed 
and  reviled,  its  grinning  skull  impaled  on 
this  same  spot  beside  the  ancient  hall  of 
William  Rufus,  now,  once  again  has  been 
remembered  and  honored.  Thornycroft's  Oliver 
Cromwell  stands  facing  Westminster,  his  back 
turned  upon  Parliament,  firm,  strong  and  confi- 
dent, but  not  an  unkindly  figure ;  bareheaded — his 
sword  drawn,  with  the  point  resting  on  the 
ground  beside  the  large,  broad  feet — every  inch  a 
commoner,  and  the  Protector,  as  he  looks  up 
towards  Whitehall. 

And  at  Trafalgar  Square,  when  the  moon  had 
climbed  higher,  the  figure  of  Nelson  on  its  high 


60  TEN  DAYS   ABROAD 

pedestal  was  bathed  in  softer  light,  though  the 

• 

unfortunate  King  Charles,  beyond,  caught  a 
spectral  glare.  His  monument  is  crumbling  to 
decay.  With  a  sad  vacillation  he  gazes  on  this 
once  familiar  theatre,  as  much  out  of  joint  in  time 
and  place  as  his  name  was  in  the  crazy  memorials 
of  "Mr.  Dick."  Falling  lower,  the  moon  rays  tip 
the  shaggy  manes  of  the  great  Landseer  lions, 
and  rouse  them — as  if  they  were  about  to  lift 
their  massive  heads  and  roar  in  a  placid  humor. 


V 


OVER  THE  CHANNEL 

I N  my  compartment  as  the  train  left  Char- 
ing Cross  a  young  French  drummer 
with  curling  dark  mustaches,  took 
leave  from  the  open  door  of  a  tall  and 
blue-eyed,  sweet-voiced  English  girl,  who  clung 
to  him  repeating :  "Good-bye,  Jean !"  and  making 
him  repeat  that  he  would  write  that  night  in  Paris, 
and  every  day  thereafter.  She  stood  tearfully, 
waving  her  hand  as  the  train  pulled  out,  as  if 
he  were  starting  on  a  voyage  around  the  world. 
Jean  was  deeply  affected  for  at  least  several 
minutes.  Then  he  drew  a  long  breath  from  his 


62  TEN  DAYS   ABROAD 

boots  upward,  smiled  as  he  selected  a  cigar  from 
a  pretty  souvenir  case,  twisted  his  mustaches, 
and  presently  sought  solace  in  the  smoking  com- 
partment. 

I  doubt  much  if  many  of  us  live  to  see  a 
Channel  tunnel,  however  practicable  it  may  be. 
To  the  average  Londoner  the  discomforts  of  the 
ferry  like  the  old  lady's  rheumatism,  have  become 
by  inheritance  a  kind  of  faith  without  which  he 
would  be  unhappy.  Most  of  the  4arge  com- 
mercial houses  in  France  and  England  have 
branch  offices  and  mutual  interests  on  both  sides 
of  the  Channel,  but  a  trip  from  London  to  Paris 
is  to  the  Londoner  a  great  journey,  though  the 
distance  is  about  the  same  as  from  New  York 
to  Boston,  and  its  perturbations  not  more  serious 
than  are  often  met  in  rounding  Point  Judith  on 
a  Sound  steamer. 

To  enter  Paris  at  midnight  is  to  fancy  oneself 
arriving  at  the  Grand  Central  Station  in  New 
York,  driving  down  Fifth  avenue  and  into  Broad- 
way when  the  electric  lights  are  all  aglare — with 
the  rush  of  cabs  and  carriages,  the  lustre  of  rich 


THE   PARIS   BOULEVARDS 


63 


costumes,  of  fair  faces  and  graceful  forms,  as 
the  crowds  surge  from  the  theatres  amid  the  blaze 
of  restaurants,  odors  of  banquets  and  the  sparkle 
of  jewels  and  wine.  Those  beautiful  wide  boule- 
vards teem  all  day  with  life ;  after  midnight  they 
are  aflame  with  a  fever-glow  and  excitement. 

New  York  has  boulevards  as  light  and  as 
beautiful,  but  they  are  beyond  the  midnight  zone, 
and  they  are  retired  with  the  sun.  They  have  yet 
to  become  famous  or  otherwise, 
with  the  men  and  deeds  of  centuries. 
Amidst  this  rush  and  brilliant  life 
one  wonders  if  there  is  no  other 
side,  until  he  sees  now  and  then 
a  quiet  Parisian  family  party  on 
the  boulevard,  or  catches  a  glimpse 
of  the  home  group  within  its  own 
little  world  —  those  inner  courts 
which  are  a  part  of  every  French 
household. 

In  Paris,  especially  Old  Paris, 
where  memories  cluster  on  every 
side,  the  present  seems  to  crowd 


OLD   PARIS 


64  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

the  past  more  closely  than  in  London.  The 
glory  of  the  Grand  Monarch  pales  before  the 
greater  Napoleon,  and  the  monuments  and  arches 
of  triumph  both  of  Louis  and  Napoleon,  are  over- 
shadowed to-day  by  the  German  conquerors. 
Paris  rooted  up  and  destroyed  the  Bastile,  while 
London  drew  the  fangs  and  let  the  Tower  stand. 
Both  cities  beheaded  a  king,  but  except  in  Mira- 
beau,  Paris  has  no  Cromwell  to  honor.  The 
Conciergerie  remains  as  when  Marie  Antoinette 
looked  through  its  bars  and  over  the  Seine  to  the 
dismal  spire  of  the  "Butcher"  St.  Jacques,  and 
other  sombre  reminiscences  extend  to  the  present 
generation,  ^long  the  wall  of  the  cemetery  of 
Pere  la  Chaise  the  guide  pointed  to  spots  where 
the  bullets  had  struck  after  passing  through  the 
bodies  of  the  victims,  the  thousand  survivors  of 
the  last  Commune.  They  had  been  hunted  down 
like  rabbits  from  behind  the  tombstones  of  the 
cemetery — those  of  Abelard  and  Helois  and  the 
illustrious  multitude ;  neither  church  nor  tomb  is 
sanctuary  now  as  in  mediaeval  days — to  be 
dragged  out,  ranged  in  line,  and  shot.  Then  the 


THE  LAST  COMMUNE 


bodies  were  laid  in  one  great  trench  at  the 
entrance  to  the  cemetery,  to  fertilize  the  long 
mound  and  cover  it  every  year  with  a  rich  growth 
of  verdure. 

After  this  it  is  pleasanter  to  catch  the  names  of 
the  Rue  de  Richelieu,  Victor  Hugo  at  the  squares 
and  street  corners,  and  to  see  memorials  and 
monuments  to  Moliere  and  Gambetta,  Corneille, 
Fontaine,  Le  Sage,  and  the  tomb  of  Napoleon. 
Notre  Dame  is  not  St.  Paul ;  its  archbishops,  like 


.ft 


the  Roman  emperors,  seem  all 
to  have  come  to  some  violent 
end.  At  street  corners  you  can 
see  where  Jean  Valjean  may 
have  climbed  with  little  Cos- 
sette  in  his  arms  over  the  con- 
vent walls ;  and  a  silhouette  of 
a  griffin  from  the  square  sum- 
mit of  the  tower,  looks 
down  with  the  features  of  the 
Hunchback  of  the  Notre  Dame.  In  the  Place 
Malesherbes  out  beyond  the  Madeleine,  is  the 
fine  memorial  by  Dore  of  the  elder  Dumas. 


THE  HUNCHBACK   OF 
NOTRE  DAME 


66  TEN  DAYS   ABROAD 

The  big  strong  head  of  the  great  romancer  is 
real,  and  there  is  a  spirited  life-figure  of  D'Artag- 
nan  of  the  Musketeers.  The  father  of  the  great 
Alexander,  General  Dumas,  of  Napoleon's  army, 
and  the  son,  Dumas  fils,  the  author  of  Camille, 
are  to  be  united  here,  it  is  said,  in  a  group. 

A  block  away  in  the  Pare  Monceau  is  a  snow- 
white  marble  bust  of  Guy  de  Maupassant ;  below 
it  one  of  his  own  creations — the  reclining  figure 
of  a  woman  in  modern  costume,  a  strong,  intel- 
ligent face  far-away  in  meditation  over  an  open 
volume  that  she  holds.  It  is  artistic  and  impress- 
ive, as  everything  is  in  Paris,  though  one  wishes 
that  her  large,  pointed  shoe  did  not  show  so 
conspicuously  beneath  the  dress. 

All  Paris  parks  have  beauty  and  character,  but 
the  Pare  Monceau  was  especially  attractive  to  me. 
It  is  no  larger,  I  think,  than  Washington  Square 
Park,  in  New  York.  Amid  its  rolling  lawns 
and  pretty  groves,  where  marble  nymphs  and 
fauns  seem  waiting,  like  Hawthorne's,  to  spring 
into  being,  I  saw  several  stained  and  broken 
Corinthian  columns  standing  alone,  silent  records 


PARIS   OF   THE   MUSKETEERS  67 

of  some  more  ancient  and  distinguished  service. 
On  the  banks  of  a  little  pond,  where  the  bonnes 
in  white  caps,  and  the  children  were  feeding  the 
goldfish  from  their  fingers,  were  other  columns 
and  the  ruined  walls  and  fagade  from  which  they 
came.  I  learned  on  inquiry  that  this  had  been 
the  country  home  in  Paris  suburbs  300  years  ago 
of  the  beautiful  Gabrielle,  where  Henry  IV.,  the 
plumed  knight  of  Navarre,  and  his  minister  Sully, 
often  found  seclusion  from  the  state. 

From  Paris  I  should  like  to  have  returned  by 
way  of  Rouen  and  Normandy — and  to  have  had 
a  passing  sight  of  Chateau  Gaillard,  the  Lion 
Hearted  Richard's  gay  and  rugged  Norman 
castle,  of  which  the  rock  dungeons  still  remain; 
but  one  cannot  see  all,  even  with  abundant  time 
at  disposal,  which  I  had  not.  The  railroad  to 
Calais  follows  closely  the  route  from  the  Barrier 
St.  Denis  taken  by  the  Musketeers  when  they 
started  for  London  to  obtain  of  Buckingham  the 
Queen's  diamond  studs.  "Three  days  to 
London,"  said  the  Cardinal;  "three  days'  delay, 
and  three  to  return."  Now  this  journey  is  done 


68  TEN  DAYS   ABROAD 

in  eight  hours.  At  Chantilly  Porthos  went  down. 
Aramis  withdrew  wounded  at  Crevecoeur,  and 
D'Artagnan  left  Athos  besieged  in  a  cellar  at 
Amiens.  The  train  whirls  through  this  rolling 
country,  dotted  with  its  quaint  old  chateaux,  and 
cut  up  in  little  farms,  where  the  French  farmer 
and  his  wife,  with  their  white  horses  and  oxen, 
toil  patiently  on  Sundays ;  or  fish  and  push  their 
skiffs  in  streams  that  wind  through  famous  fields 
in  which  the  early  strifes  of  French  and  English 
were  fought  to  a  finish. 

Battles  were  then  so  different;  bigger  spec- 
tacles than  they  are  to-day  with  our  long  range 
guns  and  smokeless  powder — football  games  on 
grander  scale,  with  grander  savagery,  and  the 
Wagnerian  accompaniment  of  a  modern  foundry ; 
dust,  clatter  and  turmoil,  when  in  the  crash  of 
conflict,  as  Lord  Derby's  "Homer"  has  it : 

"Thundering  he  fell, 
And  loud  the  burnished  armor  rung." 

The  country  seems  too  modest  and  unpretentious 
to  record  such  epics  as  Crecy,  Poitiers  and  the 


THE  DOVER  CLIFFS  69 

Black  Prince;  Agincourt  and  Henry  V.,  or  the 
Field  of  the  Cloth  of  Gold  with  Henry  VIII.  and 
Francis.  There  are  still  old  fortifications  at 
St.  Valery,  where  William  the  Conqueror  crossed 
the  water.  Boulogne,  where  Napoleon  massed 
his  army  to  repeat  the  experiment  and  failed,  is 
now  a  chief  port  of  the  Channel  —  and  some 
Frenchmen  still  anticipate  another  Hastings,  or  a 
battle  of  Dorking. 

Over  the  Channel  that  bright  and  peaceful 
Sunday  afternoon,  when  we  crossed  to  Dover, 
every  little  green  about  the  English  towns  was 
thronged  with  church  and  picnic  parties — and 
many  of  them  had  Punch  and  Judy  or  waxwork 
shows.  The  white  Dover  cliffs  are  equipped  with 
the  latest  English  fortifications,  and  the  guns  are 
trained  upon  the  distant  line  of  France,  low  on 
the  horizon.  Among  them  is  "Queen  Elizabeth's 
Pocket  Pistol,"  on  which  the  lines  are  written : 

"Train  me  well  and  keep  me  clean, 
And  I'll  carry  a  ball  to  Calais  green." 

This  is  a  long  range  for  a  gun  even  to-day.    The 


70  TEN  DAYS   ABROAD 

ancient  cannon,  a  brass  piece  20  feet  in  length, 
was  given  to  Henry  VIII.,  Elizabeth's  father; 
why  named  for  Elizabeth  is  not  stated,  perhaps 
in  recognition  of  certain  explosive  qualities  that 
she  had,  like  Aunt  Betsy  Trotwood  who  once 
warred  with  the  donkeys  on  the  green  of  these 
same  Dover  cliffs. 

One  of  these  cliffs  is  still  called  Shakespeare's 
Cliff  in  recognition,  I  believe,  of  those  vivid 
pictures  from  King  Lear,  many  of  which  are 
placed  about  Dover.  In  fancy  one  can  see  the 
old  demented  King,  gray  hair  and  beard  flying 
in  the  night,  standing  here  above  the  raging  sea, 
and  shouting  to  the  howling  winds.  Here,  too, 
are  the  confines  of  Kent,  where  that  other  mad- 
man, Jack  Cade,  was  first  to  rant  in  English 
speech  of  personal  liberty  and  freedom — and 
where,  perhaps,  the  fierce  north  winds  carried 
the  contagious  sounds  across  the  Channel  to 
France  and  to  Paris. 

But  Paris,  it  is  said,  is  no  longer  France,  in 
the  old  sense.  With  the  Republic  a  large,  strong 
and  independent  public  opinion  has  grown  up  in 


"AU  RESERVOIR,  MONSHEERT  71 

the  country,  and  I   suspect 
that  if  mutual  interests  can 
prevail    much    of    the    bad 
blood  between  the  countries 
will  be  spent  at  long  range. 
There  is  proof  of  this  in  a 
somewhat  ancient  story  that 
was  told  me,  in  a  new  form,  J, 
of      an      Englishman      and 
Frenchman     who     had     at- 
tended   the   Exposition    to- 
gether, learned  each  other's  language  and  estab- 
lished  cordial    relations.      At   final   parting  the 
Englishman  exclaims : 

"Au  reservoir,  monsheer!" 

And     the     Frenchman     cordially     responds, 
"Tanks !" 


VI 


SHAKESPEARE'S  HOME 

)ME  of  the  most  charming  English 
country  lies  in  Kent,  south-east  of 
London,  between  it  and  Dover.  The 
hill-side  pastures  are  dotted  with 
sheep,  whose  fleeces  look  like  snow-spots  on  the 
green,  and  the  rooks  stalking  over  the  harvest 
fields  alight  often  on  the  backs  of  the  sheep — an 
ink-blot  on  a  stack  of  parchment — with  the  fam- 
iliarity of  landed  proprietors.  When  Chaucer's 
pilgrims  thronged  the  roads  to  Canterbury  shrine 
this  South  country  was  the  thriving  center 
of  English  industry.  It  is  even  said  that 


WHERE  MICA  WBER  FLO  U RISKED          73 

as  the  cliffs  subside  on  the  Channel  coast,  Canter- 
bury may  at  some  distant  day  become  a  seaport, 
and  resume  its  former  prestige — Canterbury, 
where  the  dust  of  the  Black  Prince  rests, 
and  where  Micawber  once  flourished.  There 
are  Saxon  names  on  all  sides  through  Kent, 
and  the  isolated  Hop-towers  among  every  group 
of  buildings  seem  the  vestiges  of  Norman  castles ; 
but  the  towns  slumber  as  soundly  as  Rip  Van 
Winkle,  and  where  once  was  open  country  large 
forests  have  grown  up. 

From  the  train  you  see  smooth  and  pretty 
country  lanes  running  between  hedges  and 
ditches,  and  catch  occasional  glimpses  of  a  coach 
and  four,  tourists  crowded  on  the  top,  winding 
the  horn  and  waving  hats  and  handkerchiefs — 
a  delightful  way  of  touring  the  country.  Fair 
Rosamond's  Bower,  and  the  manor-house  of  Anne 
Boleyn  were  here,  but  king's  favors  have  now 
become  plain  farm  houses.  Sackville-West,  the 
English  Minister  to  Washington,  remembered 
by  Americans,  has  the  handsomest  country  seat 
in  this  neighborhood.  Nearer  London,  Chelsfield 


74  TEN  DAYS   ABROAD 

was  for  years  the  home  where  Darwin  worked 
out  the  evolution  of  the  human  race ;  and  nearer 
yet,  where  a  pretty,  wooded  hill  site  recalls  West- 
chester  hill  and  dales,  is  Chiselhurst,  the  retreat 
of  Napoleon  III.  and  Eugenie,  after  Sedan. 

Beyond  and  to  the  north  of  London  in  the  heart 
of  England,  the  landscape  softened  with  green 
fields,  has  all  the  charm  and  beauty  of  repose. 
One  cannot  breathe  too  deep  the  calm  restfulness 
of  the  air ;  and  the  passing  glimpse  is  all  too  brief 
of  the  smooth  country  roads,  and  gentle  running 
rivers  like  the  Avon,  on  whose  low  banks  Izaak 
Walton  loved  to  angle  when  it  rained  "May 
butter/'  Here  are  pleasant  abodes,  more  quiet 
even  than  the  Bronx,  without  the  picturesque, 
scenic  wonderlands  that  in  our  valleys  of  the 
Connecticut  or  Delaware,  delight,  while  they  in- 
toxicate the  eye,  and  strain  the  sinews.  And  the 
country  life  seems  to  partake  of  this  easy-flowing 
nature.  At  Leamington  station,  where  I  changed 
for  Warwick,  the  car  we  were  to  take  was 
leisurely  drawn  into  the  station  by  a  stout  Norman 
horse  instead  of  a  switch  engine.  The  most  con- 


A    PASTORAL    COUNTRY  75 

spicuous  object  on  the  platform  was  a  broad  and 
fat  Southdown  sheep  patiently  waiting  to  be  con- 
verted into  roasts  and  mutton  chops,  and  receiving 
meanwhile  with  quiet  content  the  attentions  of 
passing  tourists. 

A  strain  of  this  pastoral  repose  from  his  native 
heath,  enters  I  fancy,  the  varied  temperament  of 
Shakespeare,  most  apparent  in  his  last  years.  I 
could  not  reconcile  with  these  surroundings  the 
theories  of  landscape  environment  which  attribute 
to  this  influence  in  the  early  homes  of  great  poets 
and  artists,  the  storm  and  stress  and  grandeur 
which  mark  their  creations.  Doubtless  Shakes- 
peare caught  the  idyllic  beauty  of  the  country  on 
the  Avon,  but  the  turmoil  and  tragedy  of  his  plays 
must  have  come  from  human  associations,  assim- 
ilated and  embodied  by  his  fruitful  imagination 
from  the  traditions  which  ladened  the  atmosphere 
and  the  pageants  and  folk-lore  of  Warwick  and 
Kenilworth. 

Stratford  is  a  pretty,  Elizabethan  country- 
village,  renovated  and  restored  on  modern  lines 
with  sanitary  purpose,  and  with  stage  effect,  I 


76  TEN  DAYS   ABROAD 

suspect,  for  it  was  hardly  so  clean  a  town  three 
hundred  years  ago.  None  the  less,  these  quaint, 
old  houses,  with  plaster  sides  and  ends  of  timber 
beams  protruding,  and  straw-thatched  roofs- 
many  of  them  looking  very  tired  and  leaning  over 
with  the  weight  of  centuries — transport  one  to 
the  days  and  scenes  which  made  them  famous. 
It  was  not  many  years  ago  that  Stratford  streets 
were  less  inviting;  when  the  Shakespeare  house 
had  Court,  the  butcher,  for  a  tenant.  Being  too 
modest  to  use  his  own  name,  he  put  out  a  sign 
for  his  butcher  shop  that  read :  "This  is  the 
house  where  the  Immortal  Shakespeare  was 
born,"  at  which  the  "immortal"  creator  of  Nym 
and  Bardolph,  whose  father  was  also  a  butcher, 
may  have  turned  in  the  church  near  by  and  smiled. 
It  was  a  comfortable,  well-to-do-house  in  its 
day,  with  a  dozen  good-sized  rooms,  paved  with 
stone  on  the  ground  floor,  and  carpeted  then  with 
rugs  or  rushes.  In  the  kitchen  and  living  room 
there  is  a  large  fire-place  where  one  could  keep 
warm  of  a  cold  day,  if  he  were  out  of  the  drafts 
and  had  his  back  to  the  settle.  The  house  was 


THE  SHAKESPEARE   COTTAGE  77 

then  detached  and  had  ample  garden  space.  Now 
it  is  a  museum  of  Shakespeare  relics,  maintained 
by  the  town.  So  also  is  the  Ann  Hathaway 
cottage  at  Shottery,  a  few  minutes'  walk,  which 
is  under  the  care  of  Hathaway  descendants, 
pleasant,  bright-faced  Stratford  women;  but 
Shakespeare's  kin  are  scattered  and  lost. 

The  walls  and  low  ceilings  of  the  Shakespeare 
cottage  are  covered  with  the  autographs  of  visit- 
ors to  his  shrine.  Among  them  are  the  names  of 
Robert  Burns,  Walter  Scott,  Dickens,  and  Carlyle 
— there  is  no  more  room,  and  no  name  can  be 
written  there  now.  A  small  fee  is  charged,  which, 
from  the  30,000  annual  visitors  sustains  the  cost 
of  attendants  and  keeps  the  house  in  repair.  These 
visitors,  each  of  whom  leaves  a  few  shillings  in 
the  country  round,  have  made  a  new  place  of 
Stratford  in  the  last  half  century,  just  as  the 
summer  travel  has  built  up  the  Catskills  and  the 
country  about  New  York.  There  are  modern 
houses  in  the  village  as  well,  rows  and  streets 
of  them  in  pretty  contrast  with  the  old  town,  the 
ancient  church  where  the  poet  is  buried,  and  the 


78  TEN  DAYS   ABROAD 

Grammar  school  he  attended. 

In  our  strenuous  life  to-day  with  its  self-con- 
sciousness, it  is  difficult  to  understand  how  the 
creator  of  Hamlet  could  renounce  a  career  at  the 
full  period  of  prime  and  strength,  for  the  seclusion 
of  a  country  town.  Perhaps  he  was  no  longer  in 
the  prime.  His  physical  and  mental  life  for 
twenty-five  years  had  been  at  high  tension.  Mar- 
lowe, Greene  and  many  of  his  contemporaries 
gave  way  under  the  strain.  He  had  succeeded 
because  of  restraining  qualities,  and  Sidney  Lee 
has  shown  that  William  Shakespeare,  gentleman, 
retired  with  as  handsome  a  competence  as  many 
successful  actors  and  writers  have  to-day.  That 
repose  after  the  prolonged  struggle  to  success, 
must  have  been  welcome  to  one  who  united  in 
himself  the  natures  of  Jacques  and  the  Duke  of 
Bohemia.  And  is  Shakespeare's  career  and  ad- 
vancement from  a  country  lad,  school  teacher, 
a  lackey  at  the  theatre  door  holding  horses,  more 
wonderful  or  improbable  than  that  of  Franklin, 
— or  that  of  Lincoln,  from  a  bare-foot  flat- 
boatman  on  the  Mississippi  ?  In  his  last  years 


THE    POETS  RESTING    PLACE  79 

the  visits  to  London  and  the  purchase  of 
property,  there  are  suggestions  of  a  return  to  the 
city  life.  One  wonders  if  his  health  and  faculties 
had  been  spared  for  a  dozen  years  or  more  after 
this  rest,  whether  even  he  would  not  have  been 
drawn  by  the  fascination  of  crowds  to  participate 
again  in  some  measure,  with  the  world's  life  and 
activities.  Yet  even  Shakespeare  is  human,  and 
may  live  his  time  and  complete  his  usefulness. 

In  peaceful  quiet  and  simplicity,  and  amid  the 
scenes  of  his  childhood,  there  is  a  home-like 
fitness  that  Shakespeare  should  rest  in  the  last 
long  sleep.  He  still  contributes  to  the  welfare  of 
his  birthplace.  The  fine  memorial  theatre,  and  an 
admirable  monument  attest  the  tenderness  with 
which  the  master  spirit  of  the  world's  literature 
is  cherished.  And  he  lies  just  away  from  sight 
and  hearing  of  the  turmoil  and  strife  in  the 
greatest  city  of  the  world  he  has  portrayed — still 
adding,  after  three  centuries,  to  the  world's 
renown.  Did  he  not  in  some  measure  realize  the 
future?  Did  not  Spenser,  Marlowe,  Ben  Jonson 
anticipate  it?  How  much  larger  is  he  in  the  life 


8o  TEN  DAYS   ABROAD 

of  to-day— by  far  a  greater  figure  than  rulers, 
statesmen  or  philosophers  who  have  played  their 
brief  parts  upon  the  stage. 

Our  coach  driver  to  Stratford,  a  sturdy,  honest 
Warwick  man — "lad"  in  the  country  parlance — 
of  more  than  twenty  years,  was  born  and  bred  in 
sight  of  the  Avon,  though  never  more  than 
twenty  miles  away  from  it.  He  had  been  to 
school  and  could  write  and  read.  His  training 
in  these  rural  districts  smacked  of  that  "School 
of  Virtue"  whose  maxims  in  rhyme  were,  in 
Shakespeare's  day  part  of  the  public  schooling. 
On  a  shelf  at  the  "Wool  Pack"  I  found  some  of 
these  maxims — whose  homely  vein  of  common 
sense  is  not  out  of  place  to-day: 

"If  a  man  demand  a  question  of  thee, 
In  thine  answer-making  be  not  too  hasty; 
Else  he  may  judge  in  thee,  little  wit, 
To  answer  to  a  thing,  and  not  hear  it. 
Weigh  well  his  words,  the  case  understand, 
Ere  an  answer  to  make  thou  take  in  hand; 
Suffer  his  whole  tale  out  to  be  told, 
Then  speak  thou  mayst,  and  not  be  controlled, 
With  countenance  sober,  the  body  upright, 
Thy  feet  just  together,  hands  in  like  plight." 


"A    CLEVER   MAN"  81 

He  had  not  read  the  plays,  but  had  caught 
glimpses  of  some  of  them  being  "hacted"  in  the 
Stratford  theatre.  Most  of  the  tourists,  he  told 
us,  were  Americans,  from  which  he  inferred  that 
Americans  think  more  of  Shakespeare  than  the 
English  people  do. 

"  'E  must  'ave  been  a  clever  man,"  the  Warwick 
lad  observed,  inquiringly,  "for  so  many  a-folk  for 
to  keep  a-thinkin'  of  'im  for  so  long?" 

This  same  Stratford  air  that  nourished  Shakes- 
peare he  had  breathed  and  thrived  upon,  but  the 
muse  of  Avon  exhausted  her  magic  before  his 
day,  and  had  left  him  that  simple,  passive  nature 
of  the  Southdown  mutton  at  the  railway  station. 
But  he  knew  every  rod  of  ground,  every  fishpool 
around  —  every  family  history,  I  think,  about 
Stratford,  no  small  accomplishment  of  itself. 
From  the  road,  however,  he  pointed  out  a  modest 
eminence  on  the  skyline  as  Edgehill,  where  a 
great  fight  had  once  been,  not  seeming  to  know 
that  it  was  the  first  defeat  which  Cromwell's 
"Roundheads"  gave  the  Cavaliers. 

As  we  returned  by  the  Avon  road  he  showed 


82  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

us  the  Lucy  estate,  and  the  red  brick  hall  or 
manor  house  of  Charlecote  in  a  grove  of  great 
oaks  or  elms,  like  those  of  the  forest  of  Arden. 
There  were  red  deer  browsing  in  the  open, 
descendants,  it  might  be,  of  those  for  whose 
poaching  Sir  Thomas  Lucy  arrested  Shakespeare. 
The  Lucy  estate  appears  a  large  and  fine  property 
and  it  continues  in  the  family,  though  the  surviv- 
ing member,  a  daughter,  was  recently  married  to 
a  Fairfax,  of  the  same  family  as  the  Virginia 
Fairfaxes;  but  to  preserve  the  family  name  the 
husband  has  taken  hers,  reversing  the  usual  order, 
and  is  known  as  Fairfax-Lucy.  This  name  Fair- 
fax, brought  Shakespeare  nearer  to  American 
ears,  especially  as  only  a  few  miles  away,  at 
Sulgrave,  is  still  standing  the  ancestral  house  of 
the  Washingtons,  with  the  family  coat  of  arms, 
built  by  a  Lawrence  Washington,  in  Shakes- 
peare's time. 

We  started  a  covey  of  partridge  by  the  roadside 
in  the  Lucy  grounds,  and,  as  it  went  whirring  by, 
a  lark  leaped  up  in  circling  flight  with  delicate 
trill  accompaniment  of  song.  The  sun  was 


AMERICAN   CORN  83 


getting  low.  A  pleasant  glow,  like  Indian  summer, 
poured  from  the  west  through  the  vistas  of  those 
great  tree  trunks  whose  columns  may  have  been 
silent  witnesses  of  the  poaching  episode.  Two 
small  boys  whirled  in  handsprings  like  windmills, 
keeping  up  beside  our  vehicle,  and  whirled  the 
harder  when  I  threw  them  "tuppence."  Our 
Warwick  lad  continued  to  discourse  on  partridge 
shooting  —  he  had  a  Stratford  poaching  instinct, 
I  think  —  as  we  passed  into  the  ancient  gateway 
of  the  old  city  of  Warwick,  driving  to  the  "Wool 
Pack,"  while  he  changed  horses  at  the  "Punch 
Bowl,"  and  we,  with  keen  appetites,  ate  a  hasty 
meal  before  riding  on  to  Kenilworth. 

"You  don't  have  American  corn?"  I  ventured, 
as  the  waiter  brought  in  a  steaming  dish  of  fresh 
string  beans  whose  savory  fragrance  reminded 
one  of  Yankee  succotash. 

"Ho,  no  !"  he  sniffed  loftily.  "We  hony  'as  hit 
for  the  'oggs  and  'osses." 


VII 

KENILWORTH  TRADITIONS 

lENILWORTH  Castle  is  but  five  miles 
from  Warwick  and  barely  ten  from 
Stratford.  Shakespeare  as  a  boy,  it 
is  thought,  attended  those  fetes  with 
which  the  Earl  of  Leicester  received  Queen 
Elizabeth  so  graphically  told  in  Walter  Scott's 
story.  All  this  country  of  Shakespeare's  boyhood 
haunts  teems  with  historic  legend  blended  with 
fable  and  romance,  that  go  back,  Baedecker 
affirms,  to  the  year  one — to  Cymbeline  and  King 
Lear,  perhaps.  Parts  of  Warwick's  old  feudal 
walls  are  yet  standing;  the  narrow  streets  with 


TRADITIONS    OF    AMY  ROBSART         85 

over-reaching  houses  of  brick  and  stone,  are 
hoary  with  years  and  story,  if  stones  could  talk. 
Warwick  Castle,  where  the  present  Earl  lives  part 
of  the  year,  has  been  well  preserved,  and  still 
shows  evidence  of  its  last  siege  in  Cromwell's 
time.  There  are  some  beautiful  views  of  it  from 
the  Avon,  which  Hawthorne  admired  as  delight- 
ful embodiments  of  the  past. 

Beauchamp  Chapel,  Warwick,  contains  monu- 
ments of  Robert  Dudley,  Earl  of  Leicester,  and 
his  third  wife,  Lettice,  Lady  Essex.  Local  tradi- 
tion has  it  that  she  poisoned  him  and  afterward 
married  Christopher  Blunt  of  the  Essex  Horse, 
a  kind  of  poetical  retribution  for  poor  Amy 
Robsart,  though  Amy  and  Leicester  had  been 
married  ten  years  or  more  when  Elizabeth  visited 
Kenilworth.  In  "Kenilworth"  Scott  gives  the 
name  Blunt  to  a  rugged  old  warrior  of  Sussex, 
the  companion  of  Raleigh.  It  is  more  than 
poetical  justice  that  the  name  should  finally 
triumph  over  Elizabeth's  favorite,  for  Leicester 
was  a  showy  incapable  in  his  whole  career,  though 
effective  use  is  made  of  him  in  the  novel.  A  piece 


86  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

of  needlework  done  by  Amy  Robsart  as 
Leicester's  first  wife,  is  among  the  relics  in  the 
Leicester  hospital  near  the  Warwick  Arms ;  but 
most  of  the  local  legends  of  Amy's  sad  fate 
survive  fifty  miles  away,  where,  as  the  ballad 
relates : 

"The  dews  of  summer  night  did  fall; 
The  moon,  sweet  regent  of  the  sky, 
Silvers  the  walls  of  Cumnor  Hall, 
And  many  an  oak  that  grows  thereby." 

Our  Warwick  "lad"  with  fresh  horses  drove 
us  from  the  "Punch  Bowl,"  as  the  sun  was 
setting,  over  the  road  to  Kenilworth,  which 
unwinds  itself  through  this  country  of  ancient 
renown  as  deliberately  as  if  it  were  keeping  slow 
pace  with  time.  Deep  mossy  nooks  already  in 
twilight,  where  Oberon  and  Titania  might  have 
held  revel  by  the  moon,  appeared  in  the  turns  of 
the  highway,  or  a  shining  glimpse  was  caught  of 
the  Avon  in  the  valley  below,  burnished  with  the 
last  rays  of  the  sun.  Such  antiquated  thatched 
and  half-timbered  cottages  I  saw  nowhere  else ; 


THE  ROAD   TO  KENILWORTH  87 

so  moss-covered  and  worn  by  successive  genera- 
tions of  tenants  that  they  had  settled  down  into 
the  soil — become  part  of  the  earth  like  the  rocks 
— while  the  trees  spread  their  gnarled  limbs  above 
the  roofs  in  a  perpetual  twilight  of  foliage,  and 
the  knotted  roots  coiled  themselves  above  and 
out  of  the  mould  to  surround  and  protect  them. 

Some  new  cottages,  I  observed,  built  for  re- 
treats or  lodges,  were  also  thatched.  There  is 
nothing  better,  I  was  told,  to  keep  out  summer's 
heat  or  winter's  cold.  The  straw  about  a  foot 
thick  on  the  roof,  well  packed,  will  permit  no 
dampness  to  enter,  and  the  low  attic  will  be 
comfortable  at  night  though  the  sun  has  been 
shining  on  the  roof  all  day.  The  thatch  lasts 
for  years  with  a  little  care,  unless  the  English 
sparrow  burrows  into  it  like  a  rat,  to  prevent 
which  many  roofs  are  covered  with  wire  netting. 
If  some  of  the  American  country  houses  where 
city  people  go  to  live  in  the  summer  would  use 
this  hint  they  would  make  their  rooms  more  com- 
fortable for  their  guests  than  shingle  roofs  are, 
and  their  homes  more  picturesque. 


88  TEN  DAYS   ABROAD 

Through  such  a  road  as  this  I  could  fancy  that 
Amy  Robsart  on  her  sorrowful  errand,  the 
quondam  blacksmith  and  Flibertigibbett,  made 
their  way  to  the  Kenilworth  festivities,  though, 
I  believe,  as  a  fact,  that  they  came  from  an 
opposite  direction.  A  little  back  from  the  high- 
way is  Guy's  Cliff,  where  lived  Guy  of  Warwick, 
one  of  the  champions  of  Christendom.  He  it 
was  who  slew  the  "Dun  Cow/'  a  surviving  relic 
I  fancy,  of  the  days  of  Jack  the  Giant  Killer,  I  in- 
quired of  our  Warwick  lad  what  kind  of  a  beast 
this  "Dun  Cow"  was,  but  even  the  memory  of 
it  had  vanished  from  country  tradition.  Return- 
ing like  another  Ulysses  after  one  of  his  crusades, 
Guy  lived  in  a  cave  on  the  Cliff  as  a  hermit, 
unrecognized — only  revealing  himself  at  death, 
as  Enoch  Arden  did,  to  his  wife  who  was  after- 
wards buried  with  him  in  the  cave,  where  their 
bones  still  remain.  From  this  same  Cliff  the 
residence  of  the  Percys  now  looks  out  upon  the 
road  through  a  beautiful  vista  of  trees. 

Kenilworth  Castle  has  a  history  in  which  Amy 
Robsart  and  Leicester  are  but  later  incidents. 


PIERS   GAVESTON'S  CAREER  89 

For  a  thousand  years  it  is  identified  with  the 
great  events  of  English  life — Roman,  Saxon  and 
Norman.  It  seems  to  have  been  the  Windsor  of 
the  early  English  sovereigns,  who  admired  its 
beauty  and  sought  its  security  and  strength  up  to 
Elizabeth's  time  from  the  days  of  William 
the  Conqueror.  After  800  years  the  legends 
of  Piers  Gaveston  are  still  fresh  and  vivid. 
The  name  and  the  incident  were,  at  the 
instant,  but  a  vague  memory  to  me,  despite 
the  tragic  importance  and  veneration  with 
which  the  guide  pointed  out  the  shaft  on  the  hill- 
side that  marks  the  site  of  the  execution.  But 
Piers  Gaveston  was  a  greater  man,  and  even  a 
larger  and  more  brilliant  figure  in  history  than 
Robert  Dudley,  Elizabeth's  favorite.  Detested  as 
a  foreigner  by  the  barons  whom  he  ridiculed  and 
fought  with  native  Gascon  ability,  Edward  II. 
trusted  him  as  his  boyhood  friend  to  the  last, 
showing  in  this  no  kingly  wavering  nor  coolness. 
He  was  a  frank  and  gallant  courtier,  skilled  in 
the  tourney,  brave  in  the  field,  and  a  fine  wit,  but 
a  bugbear  to  the  "Black  Dog"  Warwick  and  the 


90  TEN  DAYS   ABROAD 

English,  who  were  tiring  of  French  court  and 
rule.  When  the  King  went  to  France  for  his 
bride,  he  made  Gaveston  regent  and  acting  king 
during  his  absence.  From  Kenilworth  Piers 
Gaveston  ruled  England,  and  when  overcome 
and  taken  by  the  barons,  he  was  executed  on 
Blacklow  Hill  in  sight  of  its  towers. 

Then  Kenilworth  was  in  its  glory,  a$  to-day  it 
is  the  most  interesting  ruin  in  England,  telling 
plainly  of  the  burden  of  a  thousand  years'  service 
for  the  state.  Its  great  walls  of  the  old  Norman 
period  are  fifteen  feet  thick,  and  into  them  were 
hollowed  out  the  chambers  where  Amy  Robsart 
was  confined.  Leicester  spent  nearly  half  a 
million  in  its  restoration,  but  his  work  was  in- 
ferior, and  that  portion  is  in  worse  condition 
to-day  than  the  original  walls.  Each  century 
placed  its  stamp  in  some  new  feature  on  the  castle 
until  it  came  to  enclose  an  area  of  seven  acres, 
as  large  or  a  larger  space  than  Union  Square  in 
New  York — room  enough  to  assemble  and  gar- 
rison it  with  the  population  of  a  town.  To  the 
south  and  east  within  the  outer  wall  ran  a  deep 


KENILWORTH   CHRONICLES  -91 

moat,  and  a  large  lake  protected  the  other  ap- 
proaches. Such  massive  towers  and  walls  could 
only  be  taken  by  treachery,  or  after  a  protracted 
siege,  and  they  withstood  these  sieges  successfully 
for  months  in  the  reigns  of  the  Henrys  and 
Edwards,  and  the  wars  of  the  Barons.  Henry  II. 
revived  there  the  memories  of  King  Arthur's 
Round  Table ;  and  the  tilt  yard  recorded  some  of 
the  most  celebrated  tournaments  of  chivalry. 
Simon  de  Montfort  did  a  greater  thing  than  he 
knew  when  he  called  from  Kenilworth  a  con- 
ference which  was  one  of  the  beginnings  of  the 
English  Parliament.  Popes,  Knights  Templars, 
Robert  Bruce  of  Scotland,  kings  and  titled  sub- 
jects have  suffered  or  died  within  its  dungeons, 
as  one  can  easily  believe  from  what  is  still  seen 
of  those  damp  and  noisome  cells.  In  the  deepest 
of  the  keep  that  Edward  II.  of  whose  story 
Marlowe  made  his  tragedy,  was  imprisoned, 
where  he  could  hear  the  revelry  at  the  banquets 
of  his  faithless  queen  and  Roger  Mortimer,  who 
extorted  from  him  his  resignation  of  the  crown. 
Now  it  is  difficult  to  trace  the  castle  moat.  The 


92  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

lake  has  vanished  in  air,  or  it  exists  like  a  geologic 
tradition,  leaving  green  meadows  where  the 
waters  were.  The  outer  ramparts  from  which 
the  country  around  built  its  cottages  and  repaired 
its  roads  for  years,  are  leveled.  A  hundred  feet 
of  earth  is  piled  above  the  dungeons,  the  secret 
postern  and  the  pleasure  grounds,  where  knights 
of  old  fought  and  wooed.  Even  the  bridge  over 
which  Elizabeth  entered  the  Leicester  festivities 
and  the  grotto  where  she  encountered  Amy  seem 
a  fairy  myth — only  the  massive  towers  and  the 
winding,  narrow  stairways,  cut  within  the  walls, 
and  worn  deep  with  centuries  of  treading,  and 
the  Gothic  tracery  of  the  banquet-hall  windows, 
remain  to  tell  that  the  triumphs,  the  loves  and 
sorrows  that  were  gathered  here  in  many  genera- 
tions of  royalty  were  not  a  mere  fabric  of  the 
fancy.  Flushed  with  the  sunset  glow  this  rugged 
old  ruin  enshrined  in  ivy,  stood  forth  like  a  moun- 
tain shelf,  decadent,  yet  defiant,  seeming  still,  with 
the  assurance  of  years,  to  glory  in  its  strength, 
mystery  and  fable — a  sphinx,  or  creature  so 
remote  as  to  set  at  naught  the  boasts  and  follies 


o 


WILL    KENILWORTH    BE    RESTORED?    93 

of  the  present,  which  it  will  outlive  and  bury  with 
the  past. 

It  was  Oliver  Cromwell  who  struck  down  with 
heavy  fist  the  old  regime,  and  with  it  Kenilworth 
Castle.  From  Oliver's  blow  it  never  recovered. 
The  walls  were  leveled  and  the  moat  filled  by  his 
orders,  and  there  has  been  no  attempt  at  restora- 
tion since.  I  wonder  if  there  ever  will  be!  It 
would  not  be  strange  with  the  enthusiasm  of 
to-day  for  archaeologic  excavation  that  spades 
should  be  turned  in  these  mounds  of  Kenilworth. 
Perhaps  it  may  await  a  later  decade  of  centuries, 
when  the  seat  of  empire  has  crossed  the  seas  and 
reached  another  English  civilization  in  the 
Pacific;  or  it  may  be  the  lot  of  an  American 
millionaire  to  restore  the  glories  of  Kenilworth 
and  enroll  his  name  in  those  annals  which  register 
a  thousand  years  of  English  rule. 

We  were  urged  to  remain  longer,  as  the  moon 
would  rise  an  hour  after  nightfall,  when  we  could 
see  the  ruin  by  moon  light  and  hear  the  nightin- 
gale's song ;  but  there  was  a  train  at  Warwick  to 
be  met — a  fiery,  grim  and  rampant  monster,  more 


94  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

exacting,  more  fierce  and  terrible  in  breath  and 
aspect  than  Guy  of  Warwick's  "Dun  Cow."  So  we 
placed  temptation  behind,  turned  our  backs  on 
Kenilworth  and  drove  rapidly  away  to  the  railway 
station. 


VIII 

THE  RIDE  FROM  BIRMINGHAM 

|T  Birmingham  a  large,  elderly  woman 
in  black,  hale  and  cheerful-looking, 
followed  behind  me  into  the  station. 
Presently  her  large  hat,  a  curious 
composite  of  bows  and  ribbons,  appeared  at  the 
door  of  the  compartment  I  had  chosen,  and  she 
entered  attended  by  a  porter,  who  carried  an 
enormous  tin  hand  case,  one  of  those  coated  with 
a  kind  of  bronze  varnish,  glowing  like  an  obfus- 
cated yellow  flame,  which  appear  to  be  a  favored 
variety  in  English  travel. 

When  it  and  other  luggage  had  been  stowed 


96 


TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 


away  in  the  rack  above  her  head 
the  owner  smiled  cheerfully, 
observing  that  she  believed  it 
would  be  safe.  I  had  doubts  of 
the  rack,  in  case  of  weakness. 
We  were  the  only  through  pas- 
sengers to  Edinboro'  in  the 
compartment — others  going  and 
coming  where  the  train  stopped 
at  the  special  stations.  At  every 
stop  my  fellow  traveler  applied 
to  the  guard  about  a  "wheel" 
which  was  on  the  train.  I 
learned  later  that  she  was  from 
Birmingham,  on  a  visit  to  rel- 
atives in  Scotland,  a  widow 
and  a  bicyclist,  the  "wheel"  taking  the  place 
in  her  affections  occupied  by  her  late  hus- 
band. Presently  the  guard  showed  her  the 
bicycle  safely  cared  for  in  the  luggage  compart- 
ment of  a  passenger  coach  directly  behind  our 
own,  whereat  she  settled  down  in  the  seat  with 
a  sigh  of  relief  and  contentment. 


BIRMINGHAM 
PASSENGER 


JOHN   BUN  VAN'S  CIRCUIT  97 

The  day  was  mild,  the  sky  clear  and  blue. 
We  were  passing  through  that  old  Saxon 
Mercia  near  the  border  of  Wales,  so  long  the 
battle  ground  of  the  ancient  Britons,  the 
domain  of  King  Arthur  and  Guinevere,  the 
bards  and  the  Llewellyns.  To  the  south 
and  east  were  left  the  pretty  country  of 
the  Avon  which  has  been  so  abundant  in  its 
gifts  to  modern  letters  and  public  life — Bedford, 
the  circuit  of  John  Bunyan,  the  traveling  tinker, 
the  dream-land  of  his  delightful  allegory; 
Leicester,  near  which  Macaulay  was  born;  the 
Abbey  where  Cardinal  Wolsey  died ;  and  not  far 
away  the  birthplace  of  Benjamin  Franklin's 
father.  Around  Stoke,  Crewe  and  Wigan,  the 
great  cloth  manufacturing  district  of  Manchester 
and  Leeds,  through  the  skirts  of  which  the  North- 
western Line  passes,  the  country  is  at  best 
monotonous.  It  seemed  that  a  diligent  search 
might  even  to-day  identify  in  this  vicinity  some  of 
the  sources  of  the  Pilgrim's  Progress — the  Slough 
of  Despond;  or  the  dread  dungeons  of  Doubt- 
ing Castle  and  a  Giant  Despair  by  the  roadway. 


98  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

There  are  many  smoking  factories  now  on  every 
side — what  Ruskin  has  called  "bellowing,  hoot- 
ing, soot-scattering  creatures  in  every  valley" — 
though  a  country  curate  who  joined  us  presently 
took  a  more  hopeful  view  of  the  land. 

This  curate  was  a  slender,  dark  man,  of  a 
happy,  Dr.  Primrose  temperament.  He  was 
returning  to  his  home  near  Carlisle  from  a 
vacation,  in  high  spirits  and  much  gratitude  to 
his  parish  for  their  generous  consideration  of  his 
welfare.  He,  too,  carried  a  bicycle  which 
established  a  bond  of  sympathy  with  the  Birming- 
ham lady,  and  his  enthusiasm  was  so  contagious 
over  delightful  excursions  by  wheel  along  beau- 
tiful country  highways  and  byways,  that  I  quite 
envied  his  clerical  life,  its  long  vacations  and 
opportunities.  Every  new  prospect  from  the 
car  window — though  he  sat  in  the  middle  seat — 
called  out  expressions  of  admiration,  in  which 
the  charming  weather  and  "the  glory  of  living 
under  the  beneficent  rule  of  the  Queen — God 
bless  her !"  were  included ;  while  the  anticipation 
of  rejoining  his  family  after  a  widely  separated 


A  COUNTRY  CURATE  99 

absence,  was  fully  equal  to  the  other  pleasures 
of  his  trip.  This  was  the  first  separation  from 
them,  and  the  first  "breather,"  he  observed, 
shortly,  that  he  had  taken  in  years.  His  presence 
was  urgent  at  a  parish  meeting  that  afternoon, 
when,  coming  four  by  the  clock,  he  would  have 
been  away  just  five  days,  and  in  that  interval 
he  had  traveled  not  less  than  150  miles. 

That  tender,  respectful  deference  to  the  Queen 
was  one  of  the  pleasant,  prevailing  manifestations 
throughout  England  and  Scotland.  I  do  not 
think  it  merely  mouth  homage  either,  but  an 
earnest  expression  of  loyalty,  respect  for  the 
sovereign  and  regard  for  the  woman,  that  came 
from  the  heart  of  the  people — an  expression  we 
often  read  of  in  the  past,  but  I  doubt  if  many 
sovereigns  have  evoked  it  as  Victoria  did.  We 
bade  the  good  vicar  regretful  farewells  at  parting, 
having  entered  fully  and  heartily  into  his  hopeful 
spirit,  cheerful  labors  and  enthusiasms.  A  few 
minutes  later  from  our  train  we  caught  a  passing 
glimpse  of  him,  speeding  along  over  his  wheel, 
beyond  the  suburbs  of  the  ancient  town,  in  the 


ioo  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

direction  of  his  family  group  and  a  little  church 
spire  in  the  distance.     His  vacations  are  shorter 
than  those  of  ministers  at  home.    But  the  English 
country   and   city   clergy   have 
opportunities,   and  with   stead- 
fast patience  and  devotion  they 
have  improved  them  for  their 
country's   good  and  their  own 
honor.     From   Matthew   Paris, 
Roger  Bacon  and    John    Ball, 
down  to  John  Richard    Green, 
they  have  been  the  makers  of 
JOHN  BALL  PREACHING        plain  English  speech,  free  and 
patriotic  thought  and  England's  literature: — 

"When  Adam  delved  and  Eve  span, 
Who  was  then  the  gentleman?" 

Our  train  was  an  express,  not  "The  Flying 
Scotchman,"  nor  had  it  the  many  little  comforts, 
or  the  speed  of  a  through  train  to  Buffalo  on  the 
New  York  Central;  but  a  kind  of  home-like 
atmosphere  had  developed  in  our  compartment. 
I  did  not  know  the  railway  regulations  for  meals, 


GOOSEBERRY  TARTS  AND  MEAT  PIE    101 

and  my  stomach  had  begun  to  clamor  for  recog- 
nition, when  the  Birmingham  lady  spread  open 
the  contents  of  one  of  her  packages.  It  proved 
to  be  a  bountiful  hamper,  to  which  she  cordially 
invited  the  participation  of  myself  and  two  others 
of  the  compartment  —  women  fellow-travelers. 
There  was  a  meat  pie  large  and  thick  enough 
for  a  bigger  dinner  party ;  some  fine  gooseberry 
tarts,  made  with  her  own  hands,  and  an  unlimited 
supply  of  fresh  gooseberries,  fresh  picked  from 
her  own  garden,  and  as  large  and  luscious  as 
California  cherries.  Gooseberries  and  gooseberry 
tarts  are  favorite  dainties  in  England.  I  have 
never  eaten  such  berries,  which  were,  indeed,  a 
complete  offset  and  correction  to  the  meat  pie — 
an  English  dainty  that  Dickens'  people  were 
very  fond  of;  though  American  kin  have  first 
to  be  acclimated  before  they  can  appreciate  or 
digest  it.  Only  the  liquid  was  wanting  to 
complete  a  feast — 

"If  we  only  'ad  a  sip  o'  tea,  naow !"  one  of  the 
ladies  remarked  confidentially.  Having  been 
watching,  I  caught  the  eye  of  the  guard  who 


102  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

quickly  delivered  us  a  bowl  of  tea  each,  sugar 
and  milk  included — large  bowls,  thick  and  heavy, 
warranted  to  withstand  any  ordinary  railway  col- 
lision, at  "tuppence"  apiece — and  the  guard 
touched  his  hat  at  a  shilling.  It  was  very  good 
tea  the  ladies  said.  I  am  not  a  judge  myself  nor 
a  tea  drinker,  and  as  the  train  was  about  to  start, 
I  was  in  a  quandary  how  I  should  dispose  of  such 
a  bowl  of  boiling  beverage,  without  serious  in- 
ternal consequences,  when  my  hostess  observing 
the  dilemma,  explained  that  we  might  eat  and 
drink  at  leisure,  turning  the  cups  over  to  the 
guard  at  the  next  station,  a  timely  custom  to 
which  I  drank  with  quiet,  internal  gratitude. 

The  old  Roman  wall  passes  through  Carlisle, 
where  many  traces  of  it  still  remain  to  show  how 
stoutly  walls  were  built  when  the  ancestors  of 
the  English  race  were  yet  savages.  A  little 
beyond,  the  Waverley  country  begins,  where  Sir 
Walter  Scott  lived,  and  where  Young  Lochinvar 
came  out  from  the  West.  Near  by  from  Ecclefe- 
chan  came  a  still  more  hardy  prototype  of  this 
bleak  and  rugged  environment,  Thomas  Carlyle, 


HIGHLAND   AND   LOWLAND  103 

who  was  born  there,  and  is  buried  in  the  church 
yard.  My  Birmingham  fellow  traveler  knew  the 
country:  well.  She  pointed  out  the  neighborhood 
of  Gretna  Green,  and  many  an  old  pile  and 
forsaken  ruin  as  we  entered  the  Cheviot  Hills. 
The  hills  are  mostly  bald  and  treeless  except  for 
plantations  of  fir,  or  areas  purple  with  Scotch 
heather.  Along  the  roadside,  on  hill  and  in  glen 
the  yellow  Ragwort  and  the  Queen-of-the- 
Meadow  swayed  and  tossed  their  heads  in 
greeting;  and  from  the  hill  tops  flocks  of 
sheep,  not  plump  Southdowns,  but  lank  and 
hardy  mutton,  with  black  faces,  tended  only 
by  sheep-dogs,  regarded  us  with  a  vague, 
passing  curiosity.  There  were  stone  pens  and 
enclosures  for  the  sheep  in  time  of  storm,  and 
cairns  of  stone  at  frequent  intervals,  but  houses 
and  barns  were  poor  and  few,  and  the  barren 
land  looked  as  if  it  had  not  yet  recovered  from 
the  blight  and  forays  of  Highland  and  Lowland. 
Approaching  Edinburgh  the  buildings  im- 
proved in  number  and  appearance.  As  we  entered 
the  Caledonian  station  in  the  environs,  we  found 


104  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

a  friendly  escort  awaiting  my  genial  Birmingham 
companion.  They  shouldered  her  bronzed,  tin 
trunk,  carried  away  her  wheel,  and,  when  we  had 
parted  with  mutual  expressions  of  regard,  took 
possession  of  that  cheerful  and  kindly  woman. 
The  train  carried  me  on  to  the  Waverley  terminus 
in  Princess  Street  Garden.  It  is  in  the  center  of 
the  old  Scotch  town,  overlooked  on  the  one  side 
by  the  ominous  Castle  walls  from  their  rocky 
prominence,  and  the  eerie  tenements  of  the  old 
city ;  and  on  the  other  by  the  great  marble  monu- 
ment to  Walter  Scott  whom  Scotchmen  never  tire 
to  honor  and  exalt — and  the  new  city  with  its 
broad,  modern  streets,  substantial  buildings  and 
attractive  shops. 


Kl 

O 

3 

w 
a 


w 

o 


IX 


EDINBORO'   TOWN 

lOUNG  NIGEL  would  find  Edinboro'  a 
cleaner  city  to-day  than  he  knew  it 
in  the  days  of  stuttering  King  Jamie ; 
or  than  it  was  at  the  later  date  of 
Allan  Brek  and  Davie  Balfour.  How  did  they 
keep  clean  then  in  the  sense  that  we  know  ?  Queen 
Mary's  palace  at  Holyrood  would  be  lacking  in 
essential  comforts  to  the  average  American  girl 
of  to-day,  and  Queen  Mary  of  the  Scots  was  well 
advanced  in  all  the  niceties  of  life  in  her  time. 
They  had  no  back  yards  or  flowing  water  up  in 
those  hillside  flats  of  the  old  city.  How  they 


106  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

washed  their  plaids  and  tartans  is  a  wonder — 
if  they  did  wash  them.  Most  of  the  plaids  and 
tartans  that  I  saw  in  Edinboro'  were  swinging 
from  those  high  old  stone  windows,  along  that 
weird  and  wicked-looking  High  street  to  Canon- 
gate.  The  tenants  hung  them  out  from  a  stick 
forked  like  a  crutch  to  spread  and  air,  and  the 
crutch  evoked  a  sinister  reminiscence  as  the  gar- 
ments waved  and  flapped  overhead,  suggestive 
of  the  three  old  crones  in  Macbethj  and  their 
doleful  chant : 

"Double,  double,  toil  and  trouble; 
Fire  burn  and  chaldron  bubble!" 

Damp  and  dark  these  hillside  apartments  must 
have  been  at  best.  The  casements  that  remain 
of  the  old  hostelries  off  the  street,  are  crusted 
with  the  grime  of  years.  They  bend  under  their 
own  weight,  as  if  ready  to  fall.  Opposite  them 
my  guide  pointed  out  as  we  ascended  the  hill  to 
the  Castle,  a  dark  and  malevolent  stone  balcony, 
projecting  over  the  sidewalk,  from  which  he 
repeated,  Argyle  had  looked  down  in  triumph 


A    PIPER   AND    CABMAN 


107 


on  Montrose  being  led  past  to  execution;  and 
"followed  himsel'  within  a  three  month  under  the 
same  balcony." 

I  do  not  know  if  he  quoted  history  or  his  own 
license — he  could  do  both.  Aleck  was  the  only 
Scotchman  wearing  a  Highland  costume  whom 
I  met  in  Edinboro'.  That  evening  he  was 
playing  the  bagpipe  on  Market  Square  when 
a  Scotch  policeman  touched  him  on  the 
shoulder  with  an  invitation  to  move  on  and 
scatter  the  crowd.  Aleck  moved  sullenly 
away,  muttering  some  objurgation  of  the 
law  that  prevented  a  poor  man  from  turning 
an  honest  penny,  when  I  condoled  with  him 
as  he  passed  me,  and  I  was  surprised  to  find 
how  quickly  and  sapiently  he  discovered  that 
I  was  a  stranger,  and  had  not  yet  seen  the 
town — how  soon  his  grievances  were  healed,  and 
with  what  promptitude  he  placed  his  services  at 
my  disposal.  Before  I  had  finished  an  early 
breakfast  the  next  morning  he  was  on  hand  with 
a  cab,  transformed  from  a  Highland  piper  into 
a  respectable  Scotch  cabby,  with  a  fluent  display 


io8  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

of  information  on  all  topics,  that  was  interesting 
if  not  wholly  according  to  Hoyle. 

"Mind,"  I  emphasized,  "you  must  have  me  at 
the  railway  station  in  time  for  the  train,  or  you'll 
not  get  a  penny  for  yourself  or  your  cab." 

"  'Be  it  for  better,  or  for  waurse, 

Be  ruled  by  him  thot  ha'e  the  purse ;'  " 

quoth  he,  as  he  whipped  up  and  we  drove  off. 

The  old  town  with  its  houses  of  ten  or  twelve 
stories  clinging  to  the  hillsides,  shows  that  early 
Scotch  propensity  to  get  into  high  altitudes.  If 
the  hill  had  been  a  mountain  and  afforded  back- 
bone I  have  no  doubt  the  town  would  have 
climbed  higher,  but,  it  secured  a  good  outlook 
and  spread  over  the  ravine,  making  the  modern 
city.  Then  the  Castle  went  into  the  background 
giving  way  for  the  University,  and  when  the 
Edinburgh  Review  began  to  thunder  so  loud 
and  far,  about  a  century  ago,  it  quite  put  out  of 
countenance  Mons  Meg,  the  great  old  cannon 
on  the  Castle  walls,  sending  it  into  antiquity. 
Edinburgh  is,  to  be  sure,  a  far  away  northern 


A    LINCOLN  MONUMENT  109 

site  to  give  so  strong  an  Attic  savor  to  an  entire 
century.  The  Review  thunders  more  gently 
now  than  in  former  days,  but  the  universities  of 
Edinburgh  and  Glasgow  have  yet  a  strong  voice 
and  influence  in  public  policies,  and  barley  broth 
and  oat  meal  cake  are  still  a  potent  factor. 

Edinburgh  does  not  forget  her  sons  either. 
Along  with  Walter  Scott  and  Robert  Burns,  she 
has  enshrined  Jeffreys,  Brougham,  Wilson  (Kit 
North),  De  Quincey  and  Chambers,  beside  Allan 
Ramsey,  Hume  and  Adam  Smith.  Even  the  later 
names  begin  to  seem  remote  now  with  the  passage 
of  the  century.  In  the  Calton  Hill  Cemetery 
there  is  a  monument  to  the  Highlanders  who  fell 
in  the  American  Civil  War,  and  one  also  to 
Abraham  Lincoln.  The  Castle  type  of  archi- 
tecture is  reproduced  in  the  prison  pile  on 
Waterloo  Place,  and  reflected  in  the  High  School, 
although  the  latter  has  a  Grecian  portico,  and 
in  appearance  is  the  most  American-looking 
public  school  that  I  saw  abroad.  The  University 
and  its  venerable  walls  I  had  merely  a  glance  of, 
but  I  could  not  refrain  from  lingering  a  moment 


no  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

at  Holyrood,  that  remnant  of  the  hard  stone  pile 
where  the  fair,  young,  girl  widow  of  Francis, 
came  in  contact  with  her  fate  and  the  hard,  hard 
world. 

Poor  Scots  Mary!  The  world  was  not  made 
soft  and  pleasant  for  princesses !  A  rough  time 
she  had  of  it  all  amid  smiles  and  caresses,  and  the 
frowns  and  rebukes  of  her  Covenanters.  How 
she  must  have  dreaded  and  detested  stern  old 
John  Knox  and  all  his  creed.  She  never  could 
understand  them  or  for  what  earthly  use  they 
were  intended,  any  more  than  they  could  sympa- 
thize with  her  nature.  She  was  a  creature  all 
made  up  of  lightness,  brightness,  gaiety,  pangs, 
and  tears,  to  dissolve  at  last  in  contact  with 
another  woman.  They  were  much  like  other 
women,  and  adepts  at  the  needle.  Mary  would 
have  her  sewing  basket  and  work  at  hand  during 
the  daily  conference  with  her  ministers  of  state. 
I  fancy  them  both  light-haired,  but  in  Elizabeth 
the  Tudor  falcon,  a  deeper  strawberry  tint.  It 
was  a  battle  royal  of  fair-haired  women  in  which 
victory  went  as  usual  to  the  most  powerful,  not 


"QUEEN  MARY'S  EARTH  ROOM"    in 

to  the  most  beautiful.  Perhaps  a  fatal  outcome 
was  to  be  expected  either  way,  for  the  isle  was 
not  "beg  eno',"  my  guide  observed,  "for  the  twa 
of  them,"  and  one  head  must  fall.  Time  which 
makes  things  even,  sets  Mary  ahead.  It  gave  her 
descendants  the  throne  —  even  Edward  to-day 
bearing  more  direct  kinship  with  her  than  with 
Elizabeth. 

Queen  Victoria  has  often  occupied  the  Queen's 
Palace  in  Edinburgh,  which  adjoins  the  ruins  of 
Holyrood,  the  broad  driveway  passing  directly 
through  the  site  of  the  old  palace. 

"D'ye  see  the  wee  stane  wall  yander?"  Aleck 
pointed  out  with  his  finger,  as  we  passed  a 
fragment  of  ruin,  a  kind  of  rounded  bay — "  'Twas 
Queen  Mary's  barth  room,"  he  continued.  "She 
allers  barthed  in  white  wine — and  they  found 
the  dagger  of  Rizzio  in  her  barth  room." 

This  was  a  new  version  to  me  of  the  tragic 
episode.  So  a  breath  of  calumny  goes  down 
through  the  centuries  a  smirch  upon  the  fairest 
copy ;  or  hovers  round  its  victim  like  a  fell  aroma 
— a  subtle  spell  cast  by  the  malign  and  haunting 


ii2  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

spirits  of  evil. 

And  stern,  rigid  old  John  Knox!  A  tablet  in 
the  open  space  in  front  of  the  Parliament  build- 
ings, marks  his  last  resting  place,  just  beyond  the 
base  of  the  equestrian  monument  of  Charles  II., 
which  has  since  been  placed  there.  The  presence 
of  the  "Merry  Monarch/'  should,  I  think,  sit 
heavy  on  John  Knox's  chest.  If  there  were  such 
things  as  "ghaists"  in  these  later  days  it  would 
press  one  forth.  Charles,  with  the  long,  waving 
hair  falling  over  his  shoulders,  has  a  strong, 
pleasing  face  and  carriage,  as  he  usually  had  to 
the  last,  despite  other  failings.  Aleck,  in  whose 
veins  doubtless  ran  a  strain  of  Scotch  Presby- 
terianism,  called  my  attention  to  the  characters 
on  the  monarch's  coat : 

"He  carries  the  feast  o'  the  de'ils  on  his  breast," 
said  he;  "and  on  his  back  the  angels,  whilk 
signifies  the  deceits  o'  Satin  that  he  kept  up  all 
his  life,  and  to  the  last." 

I  would  have  lingered  after  train  time  in  these 
narrow  old  streets,  had  he  not  reminded  me  of 
the  hour.  Then  we  rattled  down  the  paved  hill 


A   PARTING    TIP  113 

to  the  Waverley  Station.  Aleck  had  earned  his 
money,  and,  in  parting,  I  wished  him  better  luck 
hereafter  with  his  bagpipe.  He  tipped  me  a 
shrewd  Scotch  wink,  adapting  in  reply  as  I  turned 
away  to  the  station,  a  sign  that  I  had  noticed  on 
the  street: 

"The  Pickwick,  the  Owl  and  the  Waverley  kin, 
They  come  as  a  boon  and  a  blessing  to  min." 


X 


THROUGH    THE    TROSSACHS 


[ROM  Edinburgh  a  favorite  trip  is  a 
pedestrian  tour  through  the  Trossachs. 
The  roads  are  good,  the  inns  comfort- 
able and  the  climate  in  August  not 
unlike  that  of  the  Adirondacks.  Tourists  in 
knickerbockers  with  knapsack  and  staff  are 
encountered  on  every  highway,  and  the  example 
is  contagious,  for  this  is  the  real  way  to  see  the 
country.  Many  men  and  women  make  the  tour 
on  the  bicycle,  as  the  steep  grades  are  few,  and 
the  "wheel"  is  as  popular  as  it  was  with  us  a 
year  or  two  ago,  while  the 'bicyclists  appear  also 


A   GREAT  SCOTCH  BRIDGE  115 

to  have  increased  the  number  of  pedestrians. 
My  steamer  was  to  sail  on  Thursday  from 
Glasgow  which  is  but  little  more  than  an  hour's 
journey  by  rail  from  Edinburgh.  This  left  me 
a  day  for  the  tour  by  the  circular  loop  to  Stirling, 
thence  through  the  mountains  and  Lochs  Katrine 
and  Lomond  around  to  Glasgow — ample  time 
I  was  assured  for  the  accommodation  of  the 
tourist  whose  welfare  has  been  developed  into  a 
fine  art  in  this  country.  So  I  chose  the  northern 
route  through  the  country  of  "mountain  and 
flood,"  and  had  no  occasion  to  regret  it. 

The  morning  was  crisp  and  clear  over  the 
lowlands  as  we  left  the  Scotch  capital  behind. 
But  a  mist  still  clung  above  the  broad  stretches 
of  the  Forth  where  our  train  crossed  the  big 
cantilever  bridge  which  is  one  of  Scotland's 
great  engineering  triumphs  at  home.  Spanning 
the  river,  nearly  a  mile  wide  here,  it  is  by  no 
means  a  thing  of  beauty.  Like  an  ugly  though 
mighty  Colossus,  it  looks  down  on  old-time  fords 
and  ancient  ferries  that,  from  the  days  of 
Wallace,  were  the  natural  barriers  between 


n6  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

Scotland  and  her  foes. 

An  hour's  ride  brought  us  to  Stirling,  the 
Windsor  of  the  old  Scottish  kings.  There  the 
old  castle  stands  out  against  the  sky  upon  a  high, 
rocky  bluff,  grim  and  rugose,  reflecting  the  very 
essence  of  those  hardy  Scotch  Covenanters. 
For  these  ancient  fortresses  perched  upon  their 
inaccessible  cliffs,  had  a  moral  as  well  as  a 
physical  prestige.  Seen  at  a  distance  they  were 
the  glum  and  silent  sentinels  of  the  land.  One 
old  building  in  Stirling  still  bears  the  moral  senti- 
ment, inscribed  by  the  Earl  of  Mar  three  hundred 
years  ago : 

"The  moir  I  stan  on  oppin  hitht, 
My  faults  moir  subjec  ar  to  sitht — " 

a  bit  of  conscience  which  in  castles  as  in  other^ 
human  works  can  hardly  be  said  to  have  softened 
the  hearts  of  the  builders  perceptibly,  the  self- 
deprecation  notwithstanding.  Beyond  the  castle 
near  the  end  of  the  bluff,  is  that  curious,  pillow- 
like  mound;  upon  it  a  stone  block  which  many 
a  titled  head  has  had  for  its  last  pillow  in  past 


A    GLIMPSE  OF  STIRLING  117 

days,  ere  it  rolled  a  gory  mass  to  the  earth. 
It  was  in  Stirling-  Castle  that  a  Douglas  was 
stabbed  to  death  by  his  King  James.  Here  at 
Stirling  is  the  monument  to  Wallace.  His 
huge  sword,  that  is  shown  to  visitors,  is  more 
than  five  feet  in  length — a  pretty  sickle  it  would 
make  in  these  industrial  days,  I  thought,  as 
I  scanned  the  broad  blade,  if  curved  and  fitted 
to  swing  in  the  cradle  of  some  brawny  New 
England  harvester. 

From  Stirling  James  Fitz  James  went  forth 
to  hunt  at  early  morn,  and  came  by  night  a 
weary  huntsman  without  horse  or  hounds  to  the 
Lady  of  the  Lake.  To  Stirling  also  Ellen  and 
Malcolm  Grame  are  brought  at  the  close  of  the 
poem ;  and  there  Roderick  Dhu,  the  wounded 
chieftain,  listens,  as  he  dies,  to  the  Harper's  song 
of  the  Highland  fight.  Not  far  beyond  are  the 
Grampian  Hills,  of  whose  "father's  flocks,"  we 
often  declaimed  in  school  days.  On  every  side 
are  snatches  of  Scottish  song  in  legend  and  story, 
and  still  conspicuous  in  actual  life  and  widely 
placarded  advertisement,  is  a  choice  strain  of 


nS 


TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 


the  spirits  of  Roderick  Dhu  —  real  Scotch 
courage,  that  the  fierce  Highland  chieftain  would 
perhaps  himself  have  relished  as  a  national 
tribute. 

From  Stirling  it  is  but  a  short  run  by  rail 
to  the  Clachan  of  Aberfoil.  The  Hotel  Bailie 
Nicol  Jarvie  is  no  such  desolate  place  as  its 
namesake  found  the  vicinity  in  the 
pages  of  Rob  Roy,  but  a  charming 
modern  caravansary  at  the  threshold 
of  the  mountains.  Beside  it  spreads 
a  broad,  but  stunted,  ancient  moun- 
tain oak.  To  the  trunk  of  the  tree  is 
attached  by  a  strong  chain  a  pon- 
derous cleaver,  which  two  small  boys 
explained  in  Highland  dialect,  was  the 
identical  poker  which  the  Bailie  seized  from  the 
fire  to  defend  himself  with.  Their  speech  was 
not  wholly  intelligible  to  American  tourists,  who 
catching  a  word  or  two,  concluded  that  the  inci- 
dent related  to  a  record  game  of  "poker"  played 
by  the  redoubtable  Rob  Roy  on  some  auspicious 
occasion;  and  the  group  of  Oxford  students 


THE 
BAILIE     NICOI,    JARVIE 


OVER    THE   MOUNTAINS  119 

in  Tweed  knickerbockers,  with  heavy  walking 
sticks  and  briarwood  pipes,  admitted  that  they 
were  equally  ignorant  not  "being  up  in  Walter 
Scott,"  as  "a  little  out  of  date,,  and  somewhat 
too  romantic,  you  know ;"  later  they  became 
more  deeply  interested  in  the  story  of  the  poem 
of  the  Lake,  and  Rob  Roy — every  mountain 
breath  inhaled  romance,  and  set  the  veins  a-tingle, 
contrary  to  the  measure  of  material  things. 

A  horn  sounding,  our  party,  numbering  a  full 
score,  clambered  to  seats  on  top  the  coach  with 
the  driver.  He  cracked  his  whip  and  shouted. 
Four  sleek  and  handsome  bays  swung  out  from 
the  Bailie  Nichol  Jarvie,  in  rattling,  glittering 
harness,  with  the  pride  and  carriage  of  horses 
on  parade.  Our  road  wound  smooth  and  hard 
six  miles  over  the  mountains  to  Loch  Katrine. 
This  mountain  air  was  an  intoxicant,  tonic  with 
oxygen.  In  the  glowing  sun  there  was  the 
friendly  warmth  of  a  genial  companion.  The 
sky  was  a  cloudless  blue,  and  groups  of  wheel- 
men, and  pedestrians,  men  and  women,  threw 
us  greeting  as  they  strode — 


120  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

"From  the  mountain  to  the  champaign, 

From  the  glens  and  hills  along, 
With  a  rustling  and  a  tramping, 
And  a  motion  as  of  song — " 

The  Trossachs  here  are  not  unlike  the  Hudson 
Highlands — hills  dome-shaped,  or  bulbous  in 
contour  like  Anthony's  Nose,  but  nearly  devoid 
of  trees.  Flocks  of  sheep  were  scattered  among 
the  heather  almost  invisible  amid  the  craigs,  that 
otherwise  were  bare  and  deserted.  Here  and 
there  on  the  road  offering  bunches  of  wild  flowers 
for  a  penny  were  bonny  and  brawny  Scotch 
lassies — their  head  a  shock  of  tawny  red  or  yel- 
low, their  skirts  scant  and  tattered,  their  feet 
brown  and  bare,  but  with  cheeks  that  had  the 
rich  flush  of  the  pink  heather,  and  bright  een 
aglow  with  the  soft  azure  of  the  mountain  blue 
bell. 

One  little  group  that  we  had  left,  had  watched 
us  from  the  coach  yard  of  the  hotel — the  eldest 
of  these  was  not  in  her  teens,  and  the  small- 
est was  a  dainty  wee  damsel  of  half  a  dozen 
summers,  whose  waxen  cheeks  were  a  pair  of 


WEE    SCOTCH    LASSIES  121 

ruddy  apples  beneath  her  flaxen  ringlets.  They 
were  bashful  little  brownies;  a  mischievous 
Scottish  twinkle  in  their  shy  glances  and  dimpled 
chins — too  shy  to  respond  to  any  approaches  ex- 
cept with  sidelong  glances,  even  when  I  dropped 
a  package  of  chewing  gum  at  their  feet,  though 
the  temptation  was  a  mighty  one.  But  as  we 
turned  to  climb  the  coach  there  was  a  flutter  and 
scurry  and  the  nymphs  disappeared  like  a  flock 
of  birds  whom  the  air  had  swallowed  up — and 
with  them  the  chewing  gum.  Turning  the 
mountain  road  we  saw  them  again  dividing  the 
spoil,  and  at  this  safe  distance  they  fearlessly 
waved  their  little  hands  in  return. 

Loch  Katrine,  a  pretty  little  scenic  poem,  is 
such  a  strip  of  lake  as  the  Hudson  might  frame 
in  the  hills  above  West  Point,  and  Ellen's  Isle 
but  one  of  many  romantic  nooks  along  its  shores. 
Swift  and  strong  our  steamer,  the  "Rob  Roy," 
clove  its  rippling,  crystal  waters,  the  shouts  of 
the  tourists  echoing  back  from  the  hills  as  the 
Highland  clans  of  yore.  They  are  gone  like 
"the  dew  on  the  mountain."  You  no  longer  see 


122  TEN  DAYS   ABROAD 

"The  Moray's  silver  star ! 
The  dagger  crest  of  Mar !" 

Loch  Katrine  has  come  to  serve  a  practical 
purpose  as  the  reservoir  for  Glasgow's  water 
supply.  Its  crystal  springs  now  flow  into  the 
heart  of  the  city,  inspired  draughts,  sparkling 
with  native  poetry  and  romance.  The  water 
wrorks  upon  the  banks  of  the  lake  are  more  for- 
midable than  the  strongholds  of  Roderick  Dhu, 
and  the  clang  of  the  machinery  more  shrill  than 
the  "Pibroch  of  Donald." 

At  Stronachlacher  the  head  of  the  loch,  another 
coach  and  four  were  in  waiting  for  another  cheer- 
ful rumble  through  a  valley  in  which  gathering 
peat  and  stacking  it  in  piles  for  winter  consump- 
tion appeared  the  chief  occupation.  This 
brought  us  to  Inversnaid,  the  home  of  Rob  Roy, 
with  appetites  whetted.  A  special  providence, 
no  interposition  of  inn  keepers  being  counted, 
had  set  a  hearty  meal  for  us  here,  to  which  we  did 
full  justice  before  the  arrival  of  the  Loch  Lomond 
steamer.  Out  upon  the  bosom  of  this  charming 
and  larger  lake,  a  bevy  of  great  white  gulls  like 


F 
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Hi 

o 
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LEAVING    THE    LAKES  123 

garden  fowl,  followed  the  steamer,  so  tame  as 
to  rest  on  the  wing  almost  within  hand's  reach, 
and  take  the  bread  that  was  fed  them.  Ben 
Lomond  raises  its  back,  broad  and  round,  3,000 
feet  above  the  western  border  of  the  loch;  and 
the  browrnish  forehead  of  Ben  Venue  looks  down 
from  a  distance  like  the  red  head  of  a  bashful 
school  boy,  on  the  isles,  the  decadent  castles  and 
the  lowland  visitors  swarming  there  from  the 
ends  of  the  earth. 

The  steamer's  route  ends  at  Balloch.  One 
more  brief  spurt  and  the  train,  like  an  Arabian 
Jinni — the  genie  who  has  transformed  the  medie- 
val into  this  modern  world — plunges  into  the 
earth,  to  emerge  after  long  toil  and  puffing, 
through  smoke  and  dark,  in  the  heart  of  Glasgow, 
the  London  of  Scotland  and  the  second  city  of 
the  United  Kingdom. 


XI 


IN  GLASGOW  STREETS 

|S  we  entered  the  hotel  at  Glasgow,  the 
doors  swung  open  wide.  A  major- 
domo  at  the  entrance  received  us 
with  a  sweep  of  the  hand,  and 
a  grand  salaam  as  if  the  Great  Begum  had 
stepped  down  from  the  clouds  for  his  especial 
benefit,  and  I  glanced  behind  to  see  whether,  by 
mistake,  I  had  unwittingly  committed  a  breach 
of  etiquette,  by  treading  in  advance  of  the  Royal 
Family.  Flukes  or  flunkies,  Thackeray  was  it 
not,  who  used  to  style  them  so?  I  could  never 
think  of  so  belittling  this  Glasgow  functionary 


A  SCOTCH  MAJORDOMO  125 

in  sandy  whiskers,  blue  uniform,  knee  breeches, 
gilt  braid  and  buttons.  But  it  is  a  human  failing 
to  make  allowance  for  unusual  manifestations 
and  consideration,  when  extended  to  oneself,  and 
to  the  last  I  continued  to  regard  this  distin- 
guished personage  with  deep  interest  as  a  sur- 
vival of  past  glories — a  Drum  Major  or  a 
Grenadier  on  house  duty. 

Day  dreams  of  the  past  week  had  been  left 
behind  in  the  mountains,  or  they  had  gathered 
up  their  skirts  and  vanished  at  sight  of  the  dust, 
smoke  and  hubbub  of  a  modern  city.  And 
Glasgow  is  more  modern  than  any  we  had  seen 
for  many  days.  In  George's  Square  that  evening 
a  great  audience  assembled  to  commemorate  the 
birthday  of  Sir  Walter  Scott.  His  monument 
in  the  square  only  second  to  that  in  Edinburgh, 
is  nearly  one  hundred  feet  high,  overtopping  those 
of  the  Queen  and  the  Prince  Consort.  It  was 
tastefully  decorated  on  this  occasion  with  flowers 
and  flags,  and  a  vocal  and  instrumental  concert 
was  given  by  choral  societies  and  public  school 
children.  The  monuments  of  Robert  Burns, 


126  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

Dr.  Livingstone,  and  the  poet  Thomas  Campbell, 
are  also  in  the  Square,  and  it  is  the  custom  to 
honor  them  in  the  same  manner. 

With  a  population  of  a  million  Glasgow 
recalled  Philadelphia  in  some  things.  It  is  a 
great  industrial  and  commercial  center,  a  reverent 
and  patriotic  community,  as  well — more  like  an 
American  city  than  London,  with  its  street  car 
lines  and  crowded  street  traffic,  but  without  the 
feverish  rush  of  New  York  or  Chicago.  In 
co-operative  municipal  experiments  it  has  gone 
farther  than  any  of  our  cities,  and  it  maintains 
an  economical  city  administration  which  is  not 
obtrusive  nor  extravagant.  The  streets  are 
clean  and  well  ordered.  Not  only  the  water 
from  Loch  Katrine,  is  under  municipal  control, 
but  so  are  the  gas  works  and  the  street  car  lines. 
The  car  traffic  is  not  so  heavy  as  in  our  cities, 
but  it  appears  well  managed,  and  turns  a  profit 
annually  into  the  city  treasury.  Glasgow  is 
probably  the  only  city  where  you  can  ride  on  a 
street  car  for  one-cent — ha'penny — fare,  and 
electric  traction  is  to  be  introduced  shortly  on  all 


o 
c^ 
(» 


A    NATIVE    OF    GLASGOW  127 

the  lines.  The  town  is  associated  in  my  mind 
from  public  school  days  as  the  native  city  of  that 
venerable  William  Wood,  one  of  the  founders 
of  the  Normal  College  in  New  York,  and  a 
member  for  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century 
of  the  New  York  Board  of  Education.  At  eighty, 
he  was  still  the  incisive,,  courteous  and  vigor- 
ous Scotch  gentleman  such  as  I  met  on  Glasgow 
streets,  carrying  with  him  early  memories,  zeal 
and  native  training,  and  the  delicious  Glasgow 
burr-r-r  upon  his  speech.  The  University  which 
he  venerated  is  a  stately  and  historic  pile.  Near 
it  now  approaching  completion  are  the  buildings 
for  the  Glasgow  International  Exposition  of  1901. 
This,  which  opens  in  May,  is  to  be  a  supreme 
effort,  and  surely  no  English  city  is  better  able 
to  do  justice  to  such  an  enterprise. 

The  Cathedral  and  the  shopping  streets, 
Argyle  and  Buchanan  and  their  clan  suggestions, 
were  of  interest,  but  the  distinct  municipal  feat- 
ures were  more  novel  to  me.  Scotch  thrift 
shows  itself  in  careful  directions  but  the  super- 
vision is  intelligent  and  liberal  even  in  small 


128  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

matters.  At  the  windows  of  the  poorer  dwell- 
ings as  well  as  of  the  better  sort,  I  saw  many 
flowers,  to  which  much  attention  seemed  given, 
These  plants  I  was  told  the  city  parks  furnished 
in  little  boxes  of  galvanized  iron  to  fit  the 
windows  at  an  expense  of  a  few  pence — a  sugges- 
tion that  might  be  useful  in  our  own  parks, 
where  such  quantities  of  beautiful  flowers  are 
grown.  The  public  Green  has  a  large  building 
for  public  entertainments,  known  as  the  People's 
Palace,  and  a  museum  with  many  excellent 
collections.  Some  of  the  lawns  of  the  Green  are 
set  aside  for  a  practical  use — where  the  Glasgow 
housewife  may  spread  her  linen  in  the  sun  to 
bleach.  Old,  barefooted  women,  and  young  girls 
employed  to  watch  and  turn  the  washing,  are 
stretched  out  upon  the  grass  beside  the  linen, 
writh  dingy  shawls  wrapped  about  their  heads. 
They  lie  out  under  the  rays  of  the  bright  sun,  in 
quite  a  pastoral,  shepherd  fashion,  but  rolled  up 
in  dilapidated  rags  that  are  not  poetical. 

A    massive    stone    archway    forms    the    main 
entrance  to  the  Green,  and  from  the  inscription 


A  REVERENCE   OF    THE    PAST          129 

I  learned  that  it  had  been  reconstructed  of  the 
fagade  and  pillars  of  a  building  of  historic 
municipal  interest,  which  was  torn  down  a 
number  of  years  ago.  The  stone  had  been  re- 
moved and  preserved  at  the  cost  of  an  eminent 
citizen,  whose  name  was  duly  honored.  Even 
in  London  such  a  practice  prevails.  The  fagade 
of  the  National  Academy  in  Trafalgar  Square 
has  been  reconstructed  from  another  old  historic 
building,  which  would  have  been  destroyed. 
This  reverence  of  the  past  is  not  often  evident  at 
home.  New  York  will  in  a  year  or  two  demolish 
its  present  Custom  House,  and  with  it  that  grove 
of  huge  granite  monoliths,  which  for  more  than 
half  a  century  has  been  standing  at  its  portals, 
huge  sentinels,  giving  silent  assurance  of  the 
growing  mercantile  power  of  the  city.  In  their 
day,  before  the  railway,  when  Manhattan  was 
still  an  infant,  these  great  shafts  were  objects  of 
veneration,  which  a  mighty  herd  of  oxen  had 
drawn  from  the  mountain  quarries  to  the  seaside, 
but  the  great  columns,  each  an  obelisk,  are  now 
likely  to  be  broken  for  the  stone  pile. 


130  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

Sometimes  Scotch  precaution  may  become 
excessive.  The  large  ocean  steamers  sail  from 
Greenock,  several  miles  below  Glasgow,  and  at 
the  last  moment  I  had  nearly  lost  my  train  for 
Greenock.  In  payment  of  my  hotel  bill,  having 
disposed  of  my  English  money  as  the  time  for 
sailing  drew  near,  I  tendered  a  draft  sterling, 
which  was  declined.  Then  I  produced  a  $10 
bill.  This  was  indifferently  examined  and  like- 
wise declined.  There  was  no  time  for  other 
provision,  but  by  good  fortune  the  Scotch  major- 
domo  came  to  my  rescue.  He  had  been 
in  America  and  could  vouch  for  a  $10 
bill.  He  not  only  assured  the  proprietor 
that  the  paper  was  as  good  as  a  Bank 
of  England  note,  but  substantiated  his  state- 
ment with  the  information  that  Americans 
were  excessively  fond  of  griddle  cakes,  which 
they  consumed  at  every  meal  in  vast  quantities. 
The  number  of  cakes,  which  he  averred,  were 
eaten  at  a  meal,  I  shall  not  attempt  to  repeat, 
but  the  information  awakened  more  interest  and 
discussion  among  the  hotel  authorities  than  my 


A    CANNY   SCOTCH  COOK  131 

situation  pending  the  departure  of  the  steamer 
train.  I  did  not  question  the  accuracy  of  the 
majordomo's  figures,  but  thanked  him  for  certi- 
fying to  the  credit  of  Uncle  Sam,  and  extended 
an  extra  compensation  as  he  cashed  the  bill  in 
English  money  himself.  Then  I  was  driven 
hastily  to  St.  Enoch  Station  for  the  Greenock 
train. 

A  good-sized  tug  was  in  waiting  at  the 
Greenock  dock  and  from  the  train  there  poured 
out  several  hundred  passengers,  the  greater 
number  of  whom  were  women,  and  many  of 
them  as  I  afterwards  learned,  school  teachers. 
It  was  approaching  dark  when  we  had  all  been 
placed  with  our  baggage  on  the  tug,  carried  out 
into  mid-stream  where  the  steamer  lay,  and 
transferred  to  it.  At  the  last  moment  just  as 
the  tug  was  pulling  away  the  chief  cook  of  the 
steamer  announced  that  he  too  was  going  back 
with  the  tug  and  sprang  aboard  of  her.  He 
was  a  canny  Scotch  cook,  for  he  knew  that  a 
great  steamer  load  of  living  passengers  could 
not  put  to  sea  without  a  cook.  The  captain, 


132  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

the  first  officer  and  the  agent  of  the  line  labored 
for  half  an  hour  with  persuasive  eloquence  en- 
treating him  to  return.  But  he  was  an  obstinate 
cook,  and  it  was  only  when  there  had  been 
promise  of  a  specific  advance  in  his  wages  that 
he  permitted  himself  to  be  convinced  and  led 
back  in  a  triumphal  procession  to  the  ship, 
where  our  dinner  was  under  way  with  no  one 
to  supervise  it. 

By  the  time  dinner  was  over  the  banks  of 
the  Clyde  were  getting  dim.  A  strong  flavor 
of  ocean  filled  the  air,  as  the  last  trace  of  the 
United  Kingdom  merged  with  the  darkness,  and 
most  of  the  passengers  turned  in  early,  for  a 
long  first  night's  rest  on  shipboard,  as  the  Fur- 
nessia  was  due  to  stop  below  Londonderry  on 
the  North  Irish  coast,  the  next  morning  for 
passengers. 


XII 


THE    NORTH    IRISH    COAST 


of  us  up  betimes  caught  a  view 
of  the  Giant's  Causeway  before  the 
Furnessia  entered  Lough  Foyle,  at 
.  Moville.  The  Anchor  Line  boats  all 
make  the  stop  below  Londonderry  to  take 
aboard  passengers  from  Ireland.  When  they 
arrive  early  as  on  this  occasion  the  stay  is  until 
afternoon  and  it  give£  all  who  wish  a  chance 
to  set  foot  on  Irish  soil.  Most  of  us  were  glad 
of  that  chance,  for  Moville,  and  Donegal  are 
in  the  extreme  north  of  Ireland,  a  most  inter- 
esting country  and  the  source,  it  was  said,  of 


134  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

many  rare  old  Irish  customs,  and  a  choice  strain 
of  Irish  bulls. 

The  jaunting  cars,  which  some  call  "jarvies," 
once  on  a  time  would  come  cavorting  out  over 
the  water  from  the  Moville  dock,  a  mile  away, 
to  the  steamer's  side,  but  this  practice  has  been 
stopped  at  the  protest  of  the  boatmen  who  now 
row  the  passengers  ashore  for  a  shilling  the 
round  trip.  These  jaunting  cars — a  score  or 
more  of  them — wait  their  turn  at  the  dock,  and 
for  another  shilling  they  will  take  you  on  a 
half  day's  ride  to  all  places  of  interest  about 
Moville.  Several  of  these  are  within  half  a 
dozen  miles;  among  them  the  remains  of  the 
Abbey  and  school  which  was  founded  by  St. 
Patrick  590  A.  D.  and  which  at  one  time  had 
700  students.  There  is  also  to  be  seen  the  battle 
site  where  Hugh  Finnliath,  king  of  Ireland, 
defeated  and  drove  away  the  Danes  in  864. 
Near  this  site  is  Green  Castle  said  to  be  one  of 
the  finest  castle  ruins  in  all  Ireland,  without 
prejudice  to  any  others,  which  is  not  much, 
seeing  that  in  Ireland  they  have  not  Scotch 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  BALLYWHACK          135 

foresight   and   preservation   when    it   comes    to 
castles. 

Shrovebrim  Brook  is  close  by — its  cool  waters 
warranted  a  cure  to  any  person  who  may 
have  an  evil  intent  or  any  unusual  weight 
in  mind,  and  especially  helpful  in  bad  cases 
of  delirium.  Toward  Innishowen  Head,  at  the 
top  of  Ballybrack  Brae,  a  large  boulder  sunk  deep 
in  the  earth  is  pointed  out  to  the  visitor.  One 
morning  early  the  Giant  O'Flynn,  being  a  little 
out  of  sorts,  strode  over  from  the  Giant's  Cause- 
way on  his  way  to  Shrovebrim,  to  drink  the 
waters.  In  a  wayward  humor  he  picked  this 
boulder  from  the  mountain  side  at  Glenagivney, 
and  strove  to  throw  it  over  the  Lough  to  Ben- 
evagh.  This  was  only  a  little  distance  of  ten 
miles,  but  O'Flynn  being  in  bad  form  that 
morning,  not  having  breakfasted  nor  tasted  his 
regular  poteen,  the  stone  slipped  and  fell  short 
at  Ballybrack,  which  was  so  named  after  him, 
bearing  the  same  meaning  as  Ballywhack,  an 
exclamation  peculiar  to  O'Flynn,  and  since 
come  into  general  use. 


136  TEN  DAYS   ABROAD 

We  did  not  attempt  nor  could  we  hope  to 
see  all  these  wonderful  things  in  half  a  day, 
and  for  a  shilling1,  but  we  heard  of  them,  and 
of  much  more  from  these  old  "jarvies."  The 
jaunting  cars  are  a  kind  of  one  horse  shay,  the 
drivers  shaggy  and  rugged  centenarians.  The 
age  of  their  horses,  like  a  woman's,  is  never 
guessed,  because  none  has  ever  been  known  to 
die.  Each  car  will  carry  four  persons,  besides 
the  driver,  but  most  of  them  carried  six  of  the 
Furnessia's  passengers  —  bright-faced  Yankee 
school  ma'ms  many  of  them  with  note  books. 
One  Philadelphia  clergyman,  on  agreement  with 
the  driver,  took  the  reins  himself  and  drove. 
At  the  start  the  horses  dashed  away  pell-mell 
along  the  narrow  roadway  like  a  park  of  artil- 
lery. Then  all  came  to  a  sudden  stand  for  no 
apparent  cause,  except  previous  habit,  as  with 
David  Harum's  bargain,  and  thumps,  entreaties, 
and  exclamations  had  no  effect  until  they  were 
ready  to  move. 

It  was  a  gray  morning,  with  low  clouds  and 
a  misty  sun  which  began  to  shine  through  as 


AN    AMERICAN    BIRD  137 

we  rode.  The  sea  breeze  was  bracing,  and  the 
jaunting  car  an  anti-dyspeptic  and  an  appetizer. 
These  roads  were  hard  and  smooth,  though 
narrow,  but  the  low,  gray  stone  farm  dwell- 
ings were  isolated  and  lonely,  if  picturesque 
—no  cows  around  them,,  no  cackling  hens  nor 
roosters  crowing.  Dark  stone  walls,  well  made 
and  ancient,  ran  along  each  side  of  the  road- 
way, all  overgrown  with  wild  morning  glories 
and  fuchsias.  In  the  field  beyond,  the  Irish 
heather  blossom  was  of  lighter  tint  than  the 
Scotch.  A  pretty  blue,  and  a  yellow  flower 
brightened  the  bluffs,  and  the  dainty  Irish 
shamrock  twined  modestly  in  little  fairy  nooks. 
Our  cavalcade  gave  joyous  greeting  to  every- 
thing and  everybody.  Near  one  farm  house  a 
turkey  started  up  on  the  road  with  anxious 
maternal  cries  for  her  brood.  Every  car  load 
waved  and  hurrahed  for  the  American  bird,  and 
the  old  gobbler  over  the  wall  joined  the  hurrahs 
with  repeated,  throaty  tremulo,  as  if  he  recog- 
nized his  countrymen. 

Green    Castle,   the   limit   of   our   ride,    stands 


138  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

out  upon  a  rocky  cliff  commanding  the  sea — a 
formidable  fortress  once  to  the  Norse  pirates, 
whom  it  could  watch  from  the  headland.  The 
Red  Earl,  a  ferocious  wild  man,  built  it,  back 
in  the  fourteenth  century.  He  had  a  beautiful 
daughter  who  was  rescued  from  the  quicksands 
on  the  sea  shore  by  young  Walter  of  the 
O'Donnells,  her  father's  enemies.  Afterwards 
Walter  was  made  prisoner  by  the  Red  Earl, 
who,  on  detecting  his  daughter  in  an  effort 
to  release  the  prisoner,  threw  her  down  the  cliff 
to  perish,  and  thrust  Walter  in  the  deepest 
dungeon  to  starve.  Then  the  O'Donnells  and 
the  O'Neills  rallied  their  clans,  stormed  the 
castle,  and  sent  the  Red  Earl  to  his  fate.  This 
is  the  story  of  Green  Castle.  A  few  more  years 
of  fierce  north  winds  will  leave  little  of  these 
crumbling  walls  and  towers.  Even  now  the 
castle  is  but  a  mound  on  the  cliff,  covered  with 
green  earth  and  vines  where  the  shamrock 
nestles,  and  the  deene  mah  dances  by  moonlight. 
And  Moville,  a  little  town  with  long  clean 
streets,  and  plain  stone  dwellings,  has  an  air 


ST.    PATRICK'S    GOOD    MEASURE        139 

of  loneliness.  The  stores  are  tended  by  old  women 
and  men.  There  are  few  children  on  the 
streets,  and  the  young  men  have  emigrated. 
But  the  Irish  girl  remains,  her  cheeks  flushed 
in  health,  eyes  a  deep  cerulean,  and  hair  like 
the  raven's  wing.  She  is  the  bright  spot  of 
life  and  color,  a  healthful  presence,  with  glance 
and  a  smile  for  all  who  come,  and  her  native 
wit  gives  cheer  to  the  town.  Moville  stores 
do  a  flourishing  trade  in  blackthorn  sticks;  also 
in  the  genuine  Irish  poteen,  of  which  there  are 
various  grades,  each  with  a  bog  flavor  of  its 
own  and  a  potent  charm  that  is  better  than 
quinine  for  malaria,  and  sovereign  for  rheu- 
matics or  despondency.  The  poteen  comes  in 
quart  flasks,  fat  and  round,  and  half  again 
the  size  of  a  modern  quart  cup,  as  measured 
by  St.  Patrick  for  pocket  use,  and  handed  down 
to  tourists  and  posterity. 

Around  Moville  there  is  yet  obtainable  through 
favor  but  by  the  thimbleful  only,  some  of  those 
rare  and  ancient  stills  for  which  it  has  repute. 
That  which  was  once  traced  back  to  the  Garden 


140  TEN  DAYS   ABROAD 

of  Eden,  where  Adam  and  Eve  kept  it  in  store 
for  family  use,  has  long  since  been  exhausted. 
As  a  mark  of  distinction  we  were  treated  to  a 
drop  of  "Ninety  Nine/'  which  dated  from  the 
Flood,  and  was  so  dry,  our  host  remarked,  not- 
withstanding its  antecedents,  that  it  would  not 
wet  the  glass.  When  the  Ark  in  its  wanderings 
became  stranded  on  one  of  the  submerged  peaks 
of  Donegal,  a  cask  of  Noah's  private  supply 
was  thrown  out  and  got  embedded  in  the  root 
of  a  tree,  where  it  remained  undiscovered  until 
by  accident  it  was  dug  up  last  year — '99.  Other 
sources  more  modern  are  said  to  be  in  operation 
among  the  caves  of  Malin  Head  and  Innishowen, 
which  go  down  under  the  ocean  depths  to 
America.  But  even  these  have  an  atmosphere 
of  doubt  and  many  strange  tales  of  mystery. 
An  Irish  piper  being  closely  chased  by  the  Cus- 
toms Police  on  one  occasion  entered  Hell  Pit, 
one  of  these  caves,  throwing  away  his  poteen, 
which  an  officer  picked  up  and  found  to  be  the 
pure  juice.  The  officer  waited  and  listened  to 
the  piper  in  the  distance,  but  the  piper  did  not 


THE   EMIGRANTS  FAREWELL  141 

come  back.  This  was  fifty  years  ago,  since 
which  time  it  has  become  known  that  he  went 
down  beneath  the  ocean  by  the  underground 
route,  and  came  up  through  the  tunnel  at 
Hell  Gate,  New  York. 

By  three  o'clock  the  Furnessia's  passengers 
had  all  returned,  the  ladies  bringing  clusters  of 
wild  flowers  and  plumes  of  heather,  the  men 
armed  with  blackthorn  sticks  and  souvenir  flasks 
of  poteen.  A  thousand  emigrants  also  joined 
our  ship  from  Londonderry,  and  with  them 
enough  of  household  goods  and  gods,  to  fill 
a  freight  train.  We  sailed  with  full  cabins 
in  the  saloon  and  the  second  deck ;  and  a  crowded 
steerage.  Forward  the  emigrants  gathered  in 
little  groups,  waving  a  last  adieu  to  home  and 
friends  as  the  steamer  turned  about  to  sea.  Soon 
we  wrere  passing  Innishowen  Head,  where  the 
ocean  voyage  begins,  and  where  their  native 
land  fades  from  view.  Sadly  they  held  it  in 
sight  to  the  last.  The  women  drew  the  children 
closer,  as  if  to  impress  this  parting  view  more 
strongly  upon  their  tender  memories,  wrapped 


142  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

their  shawls  about  them  and  wept.  The  eyes 
of  sturdy,  rugged  men  grew  dim  and  red,  while 
amid  the  tears  and  wailing,  there  were  some 
who  chanted  mournfully  the  ballad  of  Innish- 
owen  Head: 

"Round  Innishowen,  round  Innishowen — 
Where  many  a  storm  and  swirling  moan 
Marks  white  the  shoals — How  wild  and  free ! 
How  wild  and  free,  the  great,  gray  sea, 
That  round  me  flows — and  Innishowen. 

Thou  great  Sea-King,  like  Norsemen  old, 
Have  guided  true — have  guided  true 
The  wanderer  home.    And  made  him  bless — 
And  made  him  bless,  the  grand  old  ness 
Of  Innishowen!" 

Down  along  the  Irish  coast  bold  cliffs  and 
jutting  headlands  rise  up  hundreds  of  feet 
above  the  breakers,  braving  the  winds  and 
tides.  The  waves  have  eaten  into  them  deep 
caves  where  the  storms  thunder  and  reverberate. 
Over  the  spray  the  gulls  circle,  the  sea  eagle 
shrieks  and  dives  upon  his  prey.  Sublime  in 


THE   OLD    WORLD,  ADIEU  I  143 

its  repose  the  majestic  grandeur  of  this  wild, 
desolate  shore,  the  gray  August  afternoon,  as 
we  sailed  by,  I  have  never  seen  elsewhere. 
Roofing  the  cliffs  and  swelling  above  them 
against  the  sky  were  the  mountains  of  Donegal, 
high  as  the  Adirondacks  and  bare  of  trees,  but 
thickly  clad  in  heather,  their  rounded  outlines 
seemed  the  recumbent  forms  of  those  giants  of 
Irish  story — "a  wearing  of  the  green."  There 
were  few  houses  and  no  life  visible  from  the 
steamer's  deck,  on  those  great  round  hills,  but 
narrow  roads  circle  in  yellow  ribbons  to  the 
summits,  and  an  American  told  me  that  a  trip 
over  them  in  a  jaunting  car  was  one  of  his 
most  interesting  experiences  in  Europe. 

This  was  our  last  sight  of  the  old  world. 
The  setting  sun  threw  soft  chromatic  tints 
upon  the  cliffs  and  mountains.  Our  steamer 
passed  between  the  Aran  Islands  and  the  shore, 
turning  her  course,  then,  nearly  due  west  over 
the  North  Atlantic.  Later  in  the  night,  when 
most  of  the  passengers  had  retired,  a  dull  glow 
showed  above  the  distant  mountain  ranges, 


144  TEN  DAYS   ABROAD 

deepening  as  we  lodked,  until  it  appeared  a 
smoldering  volcano  about  to  burst  forth  from 
a  crater  on  their  summits.  Around  it  the  clouds 
were  fired  with  refulgence,  and  through  them 
glided  up  the  lurid  moon.  Blue-domed,  silent 
and  vast  this  ocean-amphitheatre  was  lit  with 
mellow  flame,  as  of  an  awakening  world  while 
yet  the  lights  of  dawn  burn  low,  and  all  is 
still,  though  the  curtain  is  lifted  for  the  life 
drama  to  begin.  A  broad  swathe  of  light  swept 
down  upon  the  sea.  Presently  it  overtook  the 
steamer  passing  on  beyond  to  point  a  glowing 
pathway  from  the  skies — from  the  old  world 
with  its  chequered  past,  and  all  its  restrictions, 
to  the  broader  and  freer,  distant  continent.  In 
the  wake  of  the  Furnessia  the  waves  tossed 
with  weird  and  responsive  significance,  girdling 
our  vessel  in  its  course  with  phosphorescent 
flashes  like  a  mystic  circle  inscribed  by  the 
mighty  Magi  of  the  ocean. 


XIII 


ON    THE    NORTH    ATLANTIC 


T 


HE  Furnessia  struck  a  high  northerly 
course  across  the  Atlantic,  continuing 
on  it  until  the  third  day,  when  she 
turned  south  by  west,  sharp,  by  which 
route  the  Captain  hoped  to  shave  the  Banks 
and  avoid  as  much  heavy  fog  as  possible.  In 
this  manner  he  expected  to  accomplish  a  good 
average  trip,  for,  if  no  heavy  fogs  were  en- 
countered we  should  not  have  to  slow  up,  and 
the  chances  would  be  in  our  favor  to  sight 
Sandy  Hook  within  ten  days. 

Half  a  dozen  sea  gulls  followed  us  out  from 
J 


146  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

the  Irish  coast  for  those  three  days,  and  it  was 
an  unceasing  source  of  interest  to  watch  their 
vigilant  method  of  patrol  in  the  track  of  the 
steamer.  All  day  long  they  hovered  in  the  wake 
on  tireless  wing,  usually  making  wide  circuits 
over  the  steamer's  track,  in  the  fashion  of  dogs 
searching  for  a  scent,  so  that  it  was  rare  that 
their  sharp  sight  missed  any  article  of  food.  I  tried 
them  several  times  by  throwing  over  when  they 
did  not  appear  to  be  looking,  a  package  of  bread 
tied  in  paper,  but,  if  it  got  some  distance  behind  it 
was  not  lost,  as  they  always  had  at  least  one 
patrol  far  to  the  rear,  who  was  sure  to  espy 
anything  that  escaped  the  rest.  They  never 
seemed  to  rest  unless  it  was  for  a  few  moments 
on  the  waves,  or  unless  they  did  sleep  on  the 
wing  at  night.  At  meal  time  they  would  all 
come  up  at  closer  quarters  to  secure  their  share 
of  the  dinner  refuse  that  was  thrown  over.  After 
following  us  for  nearly  a  thousand  miles,  on  the 
third  day  they  disappeared,  and  we  saw  them 
no  more.  This  we  were  told  was  their  usual 
custom,  whether  or  not  it  was  the  limit  of  their 


THE  SEA   GULL'S  INSTINCT  147 

endurance  and  ability  to  return,  but  the  Captain 
said  they  never  made  the  entire  voyage  across 
the  ocean.  I  also  recollected  that  about  this 
distance  from  land  we  first  encountered  gulls 
on  our  passage  over.  Perhaps  an  instinct  of  the 
unknown  restrains  them — except  returning  ships, 
they  have  no  objects  or  fixed  localities  like  the 
carrier  pigeon  to  guide  them  home. 

From  the  first  night  we  ran  upon  chill  and 
squally  weather,  which  caused  passengers  who 
came  on  deck  to  seek  the  sunny  and  sheltered 
sides.  Many  did  not  make  their  appearance  at 
all,  and  the  tables  were  only  half  filled  at  meals. 
Following  the  holiday  comes  a  reaction.  To 
the  qualms  and  nausea  of  the  ocean  is  added  a 
general  exhaustion  after  six  weeks'  or  two 
months'  gallop  over  the  continent,  from  which 
so  many  were  returning.  The  enthusiasm,  too, 
of  an  outward  voyage  is  wanting  in  the  first 
days  of  a  return  trip,  where  the  end  of  the 
journey  is  yet  so  distant.  There  were  deep- 
drawn  sighs  from  figures  with  pale  faces,  at 
the  rail,  and  something  of  the  confidence  even 


148  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

of  the  American  girl  disappeared  as  she  looked 
and  longed  for  the  distant  home.  One  southern 
maid  with  dreamy  eyes  and  a  bright  solitaire 
on  the  finger  of  the  left  hand  looked  out  from 
under  her  rugs  continually,  her  thoughts  far 
away  and  her  book  neglected,  as  she  gazed 
wistfully  across  the  waste  of  waters,  the  end 
of  which  she  feared  would  never  come.  And 
a  robust  passenger  from  a  far  western  Iowa 
town,  who  climbed  on  deck  the  third  day,  weak 
and  pallid,  aided  by  a  slender,  little  invalid  wife, 
vowed  that  he  would  never  leave  their  village 
home  to  cross  the  sea  again.  People  might  talk 
until  they  were  dumb  about  foreign  parts,  but 
give  him  his  own  town,  that  was  plenty  good 
enough  for  him. 

Then  there  was  an  enterprising  business  man 
who  had  "rushed"  the  continent,  "doing  Rome 
at  midnight  by  train,"  who  proposed  to  organize 
a  syndicate  for  building  castles  in  New  England 
of  old  stone  fence  walls.  He  guranteed  to  dupli- 
cate the  finest  ruin  on  the  continent  in  six  months, 
and,  for  the  accommodation  of  his  fellow 


A  STORM   TRACK  149 

voyagers  he  offered  to  open  up  his  syndicate 
right  there  on  ship  and  take  any  of  them  in 
on  the  ground  floor.  I  noticed  that  while  many 
listened  and  agreed  with  him,  no  one  appeared 
to  have  a  desire  to  build  castles  on  shipboard, 
and  those  who  wanted  chances  and  excitement 
found  enough  speculation  in  the  steamer's  daily 
run. 

Before  reaching  the  Banks  we  entered  a 
storm  track  —  one  of  those  currents  in  which 
storms  circle  and  lose  themselves  in  mid-ocean, 
and  go  wandering  and  whirling  about  as 
if  in  outer  space,  until  they  die  from  sheer  want 
of  breath.  The  air  was  often  filled  with  a  flying 
scud  that  at  times  came  down  in  torrents  of 
rain,  or  brightened  suddenly  and  fled  as  the  mist 
of  a  June  shower.  And  with  the  bright  sun 
and  the  blue  sky  for  half  an  hour,  everyone 
brightened  and  grew  cheerful,  and  the  cabin 
turned  out  upon  deck.  But  this  North 
Atlantic  is  cold.  Even  of  an  August  morning 
you  suspect  a  rim  of  ice  in  your  salt  water  bath. 
Early  in  the  season  this  is  a  neighborhood  for 


i5o  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

icebergs.  A  great  French  liner  went  down  near 
here  a  year  or  so  ago,  leaving  only  a  boat  load 
of  exhausted,  frosted  human  beings  to  tell  the 
story.  It  is  not  a  sea  to  experiment  in.  Not 
even  that  fair  maid  from  Perth,  Canada,  who 
longed  for  something  rare  and  unexpected,  cared 
for  an  experience  of  shipwreck  in  this  locality. 
She  had  finished  her  college  studies,  and  had 
been  graduated  with  cap  and  gown  in  New 
York  last  spring",  an  athlete  and  a  Bachelor  of 
Arts.  Returning  from  the  European  trip  filled 
with  the  glory  of  the  past,  the  majesty,  the 
beauty  and  the  poetry  of  the  sea  she  longed  to  sail 
on  and  on  for  ever. 

Our  ship,  a  great  iron  kettle  somewhat  old 
and  time-worn  as  judged  by  the  standard 
which  modern  service  implies,  but  warranted 
stout,  safe  and  whole,  plowed  onward  its  course 
alive  with  human  freight.  It  recalled  those 
maritime  experiments  of  boyhood  when  I  have 
seen  a  tin  dish  floated  in  a  wash  tub  with  a 
cargo  of  ants,  or  Blatta  Germanica  (plain  Croton 
insects),  rushing  to  and  fro  to  the  water's  edge, 


OUT   OF    THE    WORLD  151 

which  was  made  blue  and  sea-like  with  indigo, 
and  was  sometimes  churned  into  storm  and 
foam.  Our  greater  number  still  longed  for  home. 
But  as  we  drew  south  and  turned  the  first  half 
of  the  voyage  the  skies  became  warmer,  the 
sun  shone  out,  the  tables  filled  and  the  decks 
swarmed  again,  or  were  piled  with  chairs  and 
figures  wrapped  in  rugs,  and  breathing  new 
life  and  hope.  Few  talked  of  another  trip  abroad, 
and  strange  sights  and  foreign  incidents  and 
people  were  forgotten  in  the  thought  of  homes 
and  friends  that  were  drawing  near. 

For  three  days  since  leaving  sight  of  land  we 
had  seen  no  trace  of  ship  or  sail  upon  the 
ocean.  Where  were  they  all  ?  Could  aught  have 
happened  to  the  world  in  that  interval!  At 
noon  of  the  fourth  day  the  Furnessia  was 
pushing  ahead  through  a  thick  mist,  sounding 
at  intervals  of  every  few  minutes  her  dismal 
foghorn,  like  some  cow-maiden  of  the  sea  in 
distress,  when  there  came  an  answering  signal. 
Our  ship  slowed  up.  Her  whistle  sounded  loud 
and  strong — and  directly  another  in  reply  came 


152  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

back  through  the  fog,  but  with  no  appearance 
of  another  vessel. 

Passengers  poured  out  upon  deck  to  see  so 
strange  a  sight  as  another  passing  vessel,  which 
none  could  see,  but  whose  answering  signal 
might  have  been  taken  for  an  echo,  had  it  not 
distinctly  differed  in  its  tone  from  the  whistle 
of  our  own  steamer.  So  close  at  hand,  it 
sounded  coming  from  every  quarter,  or  no 
distinct  quarter,  and  yet  remained  unseen,  that 
there  was  something  weird  and  uncanny  in  it 
all — suggestive  of  the  Phantom  Ship  or  the 
Flying  Dutchman  himself — one  realizes  how  the 
sea  gives  birth  to  strange  and  weird  fancies. 
Then  the  white  fog  to  the  southwest,  just  off 
our  bows,  began  to  darken  in  midday,  as  from 
a  pall,  and  the  shadow  broadened  into  enormous 
proportions — the  colossal  hull  of  a  ship  reaching 
upward  to  the  skies,  more  like  the  outline  of  a 
mountain  headland.  The  passengers  from  cabin 
and  steerage,  high  and  lower  decks,  looked  on 
in  common  wonder  at  the  great  bulk  of  this 
approaching  monster,  when  she  broke  through 


A   PRAIRIE   PREACHER  153 

the  fog  within  a  good  pistol  shot  of  our  own 
vessel.  At  first  it  seemed  treble,  double — a  fleet 
of  steamers.  Out  in  the  open  in  clear  sight  it 
appeared  only  one, — a  kind  of  "tramp"  or  cattle 
steamer  all  boarded  up  on  the  sides.  About 
her  decks  a  handful  of  the  crew  moved  scanning 
us  as  we  passed,  while  she  glided  on  behind  us 
into  the  fog  again  and  disappeared. 

Among  the  clergymen  on  the  Furnessia 
many  denominations  were  represented — one 
who  seemed  to  represent  them  all,  was  in 
minor  orders,  an  erratic  product  of  prairie 
schools,  with  a  smattering  of  Greek  and 
theology.  In  him  were  curiously  blended 
with  turbulent  fervor,  the  energies  of  a  Langland 
or  a  crusading  Peter — "a  call"  to  preach  on  all 
occasions,  and  to  recite  illustrious  sentiments  and 
eloquence  at  other  times.  On  deck  one  early 
morning  I  encountered  him  shouting  to  the  sea 
in  Shakespeare,  and  Byron's  apostrophy.  The 
flying  cloud-wrack  swept  in  mists  across  the 
steamer,  dampening  his  long,  black  hair.  His 
eyes  rolled  in  fine  frenzy  as  with  one  hand 


154  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

on  the  capstan  for  balance,  the  other  waving, 
he  strove  to  outvie  the  Furnessia's  fog  whistle 
and  the  ocean  turmoil : — 

"What's  Hecuba  to  him, 
Or  he  to  Hecuba!" 

In  that  species  of  divine  afflatus  which  had  seized 
him,  he  vaunted  his  right  as  a  free-born, 
American  to  revel.  He  had  made  his  way 
through  Europe  on  vacation  without  church  or 
congregation  at  home,  to  defray  his  expenses, 
and  now  he  was  returning  by  steerage;  but, 
with  Yankee  prerogative,  the  freedom  of  the 
ship  was  his. 

"Do  you  think/7  asked  another  passenger,  also 
an  American,  a  clear,  serene-eyed,  pretty  little 
maiden  of  twelve  summers,  daughter  of  a 
missionary  and  born  in  China,  but  returning  now 
to  an  American  home:  "Do  you  think  the 
European  nations  are  in  decadence?" 

A  question  to  stagger  a  great  philosopher — 
such  as  often  comes  from  children  and  novices, 
and  often  to  the  American  traveler.  Who  shall 


THE  VIRGIN  ROCK  155 

say  ?  Even  if  behind  American  ideas  of  progress, 
we  have  yet  to  learn  all  there  is  to  know  from 
the  staid  customs  of  France  and  England.  He 
would  be  bold  to  say  that  Europe  has  reached 
the  limit  when  more  than  once  France  has  been 
behind  in  the  race,  and  has  won  again  the 
front  place,  while  rivals  went  down  in  overcon- 
fidence.  This  struggle  for  place  between  two 
worlds,  the  old  and  the  new,  is  it  other  than 
the  old,  old  struggle  of  the  animal,  and  of  tribal 
man  for  dominion — of  youth  and  vigor  emerging 
from  longanimous  puppydom  with  swinging 
stride,  lust  of  strength,  assurance  and  impatience 
to  relieve  the  elders  at  the  helm? 

Fair  weather  and  mild  returned  now  we  had 
completed  the  first  half  of  our  trip  and  entered 
on  the  home  stretch.  The  coast  of  Labrador  or 
Newfoundland  lay  away  to  the  west  a  thousand 
miles  more  or  less — it  did  not  matter.  We  were 
passing  the  Banks  where  the  smacks  of  the 
fishermen  appeared — the  haunts  of  the  Virgin 
of  Kipling's  Captain  Courageous.  Big  schools 
of  porpoise  circled  about  and  dove  beneath  our 


156  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

ship.  Whales  spouted  every  day  at  a  little 
distance  alongside.  By  night  the  sun  went  down 
in  colors  as  rich  and  flowing  as  Turner's  sunsets — 
in  floating  sheen  of  silver  and  gold,  with  bars 
of  effulgent  carmine,  that  dissolved  in  agate  and 
ivory,  paving  a  glorious  pathway  to  gates  of 
pearl — the  gateways  to  our  homes. 


XIV 

SANDY    HOOK 

HOSE  last  few  days  of  our  home 
voyage,  were  pleasant  days,  even 
when  the  weather  was  not  all  it 
might  have  been,  for  one  got  to  know 
everyone  else,  by  sight  at  least,  on  board  the 
Furnessia.  The  ocean  steamer  —  especially  on 
a  home  voyage — is  surely  a  potential  factor  in 
modern  society.  I  fancy  that  Herbert  Spencer 
will  presently  have  to  assign  it  a  recognized 
place  and  influence  in  his  system.  So  many  lives 
are  daily  brought  in  contact  on  its  decks,  that 
would  otherwise  continue  as  remote  as  the  Anti- 


158  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

podes,  and  the  friendships  and  relations  which 
are  formed  there  often  last  through  life,  or 
serve  to  shape  events  thereafter. 

Frequently  in  England  among  English 
tourists  on  vacation  tours,  I  heard  the  query: 
How  do  Americans  —  clergymen,  teachers, 
and  employes  travel  so  far  from  home? 
The  Englishman  himself  a  great  traveler  at 
home  and  on  the  continent,  does  not  so 
often  stretch  his  horizon  to  the  westward, 
unless  he  becomes  an  emigrant.  Americans — 
from  every  State  and  clime  —  were  in  the 
majority  in  the  cabin,  accompanied  often  by 
Scotch  or  English  kin,  mild  and  passive  in 
demeanor,  who  become  in  a  single  generation 
on  American  soil,  the  alert,  pushing  and  vigorous 
Anglo-Saxon  Yankee. 

On  those  last  days  at  sunset  and  by  twilight 
we  had  impromptu  concerts  either  on  deck,  or, 
after  dark  in  the  saloon  with  piano  music. 
Almost  forgotten  old  ballads  with  their  catching 
melodies  and  quaint  words,  sung  in  solo,  in 
duet  and  chorus,  touched  many  half-remem- 


SOCIAL  LIFE  ON  SHIP  159 

bered  chords  with  their  simple  cadences,  in  an 
audience  so  widely  drawn  from  town  and  country 
of  a  broad  land.  Under  the  saloon  balcony  at 
concert  hour,  and  in  the  home-like  glow  of  the 
lamp  at  the  dining  table,  a  white-haired  old 
Scotch  lady,  plied  her  knitting  needles  steadily, 
while  she  followed  through  her  spectacles  the 
large  type  of  her  family  Bible.  Pulsing 
through  the  ship  as  she  sways  and  forges  on, 
the  engines'  throbs  telling  out  the  moments  and 
circulating  life,  are  the  mighty  heart-beats  of 
this  vast  horologe,  as  it  swings  like  a  planet 
from  continent  to  continent  through  its  sphere ; — 
in  intervals  of  song  comes  the  long  toot  of 
the  foghorn  without,  and  perhaps  a  gleam  of 
lights  and  an  answering  signal  over  the  water 
from  another  steamer  in  the  night. 

Each  day  the  air  became  more  mild  and  balmy. 
And  of  a  morning  when  the  charming  Sandusky 
widow  with  the  white,  felt  chapeau  and  gipsy 
locks,  comes  on  deck,  casting  about  her  as  an 
experienced  mariner,  the  roving  glances  of  her 
dark  and  winsome  eye,  she  gathers  up  a  ready 


160  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

train.  What  age  and  clime,  oh  gentle  woman, 
since  social  rites  begun,  have  not  bowed  unto 
your  soft  and  subtle  charms!  The  favored  few 
only  are  permitted  to  inscribe  their  names  on 
the  rim  of  that  rakish  beaver.  It  was  occupied 
by  an  array  of  conquests  when  the  steamer  sailed, 
and  available  space  filled  rapidly,  once  we  were 
afloat.  Before  we  reach  the  Narrows  it  should 
be  at  a  premium.  Several  days  before,  its  ap- 
pearance recalled  the  walls  and  ceilings  of  the 
Shakespeare  house  at  Avon,  where  further 
handwriting  is  forbidden. 

Many  others,  too,  there  are  on  shipboard — 
a  graceful  California  maid,  whose  sweet  soprano 
is  in  demand  for  every  duet, — the  Boston  girl 
with  crimson  hat,  a  Scotch-plaid  gown,  and 
laughing,  half-shut  eyes  from  which  her  glances 
stream,  like  rifts  of  summer  sky  through  a 
passing  cloud.  There  are  eligible  single  gentle- 
men, with  no  other  occupation  than  to  please 
and  to  be  pleased.  Something  of  wonder,  and 
mystery  envelopes  one  of  them  at  the  first — 
a  slight  and  prepossessing  blonde,  of  genteel 


A  PROFESSOR  OR  A  MILLIONAIRE      161 

manners  and  drooping  moustache — an  author,  it 
was  hinted,  a  university  professor,  or  a  million- 
aire incognito.  Then  an  acquaintance  addresses 
him  as  "doctor,"  and  presently  it  becomes  known 
that  he  is  a  dentist  with  large  practice  in  a 
western  city.  He  has  spent  the  summer  abroad 
in  an  extended  vacation,  from  which  he  is  now 
returning  home. 

The  "Doctor"  is  nice  and  fastidious  in  his 
fancies — especially  as  to  ladies,  always  looking 
them  fairly  in  the  face,  perhaps  because  that 
gives  a  better  glimpse  of  the  mouth,  which  from 
his  extended  experience,  and  the  amount  of 
treasure  he  has  placed  in  many  mouths,  affords 
a  kind  of  index  to  the  age,  fortune  and  character 
of  the  fille  under  consideration.  It  is  also  inti- 
mated that  he  is  personally  interested  in  an 
inspection  of  the  market,  and  that  he  never  yet 
had  found  the  mouth  and  teeth  that  answered 
his  expectations.  In  that  bright  New  England 
girl,  with  the  crimson  hat  and  the  laughing,  half- 
shut  eyes,  he  certainly  displayed  a  marked  and 
growing  interest.  I  fancied  that  in  this  instance 


162  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

his  attention  was  not  wholly  concentrated  on  the 
mouth  which  was  bow-shaped  and  small,  and 
the  teeth,  which  were  pearls  and  genuine  — 
themselves  a  treasure.  The  eyes,  the  expression, 
and  doubtless  the  New  England  wit,  had  their 
influence.  At  times  he  lost  that  confident,  dental 
equipoise — and  there  was  an  unexpected  timidity, 
when  he  aided  her  on  the  swaying  deck  through 
the  maze  of  steamer  chairs,  which  was  not 
consistent  with  the  professional  dignity  of  the 
dental  minuet  as  it  is  practised  in  luxurious 
"parlors"  when  assisting  the  fair  patient  from 
an  operating  chair. 

Out  of  the  evening  concerts  came  the  regular 
entertainments  of  the  last  nights  on  board  ship, 
which  levied  on  all  talent.  The  first  cabin  made 
a  respectable  showing,  and  the  second  cabin  did 
quite  as  well  the  night  following ;  but  the  steerage 
deserved  the  award  for  accomplishing  even  more 
under  great  difficulties.  Their  numbers  were 
double  those  of  the  cabins,  and  their  auditorium 
was  deep  in  the  bowels  of  the  ship  below  the 
water  belt.  From  the  upper  deck  we  could  look 


VAUDEVILLE  TALENT  163 

down  the  air  shaft,  thirty  feet,  upon  their  stage, 
though  the  air  at  this  height  became  a  trifle 
close  and  oppressive  as  it  ascended.  But  neither 
audience  nor  players  appeared  to  mind  that. 
They  had  an  elaborate  bill  lasting  until  after 
midnight,  with  repeated  encores,  song  and  dance, 
coster-singing,  and  a  variety  that  would  have 
made  the  reputation  of  a  vaudeville  house.  Our 
steward,  a  bland,  smiling  and  self-confident 
Scotchman,  who  plumed  himself  on  his  elocu- 
tionary talent,  being  "not  an  educated  man,"  but 
one  who  had  "obtained  his  experience  by  degrees" 
— and  much  practice,  on  patient  ocean  audiences — 
did  no  disdain  to  present  his  talent  to  the 
steerage  having  already  given  it  in  the  cabins 
with  encores;  but  in  the  lower  deck  on  this 
occasion  there  was  a  larger  array  of  competitive 
talent,  and  his  reception  was  not  so  cordial. 

At  last  on  the  morning  of  the  tenth  day  which 
was  Sunday,  we  turned  Montauk  Point  and  stood 
off  Long  Island.  Now  as  we  neared  the 
journey's  end  the  fog  lifted.  It  had  gone 
entirely  when  wre  sighted  the  light-ship  off  Fire 


164  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

Island.  Services  were  in  progress  in  the  cabin 
conducted  by  an  orthodox  Presbyterian  clergy- 
man from  the  West,  who  while  suffering  the 
tortures  of  sickness  throughout  the  voyage,  had 
framed  his  discourse  —  it  was  a  fervid  thesis 
upon  another  Fire  Island,  whose  portrayal 
this  warm  morning,  in  the  close  cabin,  was 
strikingly  real,  bringing  forth  a  copious  perspir- 
ation on  both  speaker  and  congregation  —  but 
an  intimation  that  we  should  enter  the  harbor 
within  a  few  hours,  spread  quickly,  and  it  cleared 
the  cabin  forthwith. 

Then  came  the  long  line  of  Great  South  Bay 
on  our  northern  horizon — sail  boats  and  lighters 
in  the  distance — the  Pilot  Boat,  the  papers  and 
the  news  of  the  world;  best  of  all,  the  Highland 
Light  at  Navesink,  Sandy  Hook  and  the  white 
stretch  of  beach  to  Asbury  reaching  out  as  if 
to  welcome  and  encompass  our  steamer,,  and 
ensure  the  end  of  the  voyage  that  afternoon. 
Trunks  were  quickly  packed  and  strapped,  and  a 
cheerful  throng  swarmed  the  decks. 

"Hurrah !    for  the  Light  Ship !"  shouted  .the 


HURRAH  FOR  EVERYTHING!  165 

hilarious  downeaster,  and  every  one  hurrahed. 

''Hurrah  for  the  Buoys!"  and  all  hurrahed. 

"Hurrah  for  Rockaway!  for  Coney  Island! 
The  Elephant !  The  distant  bathers  in  the  surf !" 

Back  of  the  Jersey  hills  great,  purple  swelling, 
thunder-clouds  loomed  up,  but  rolled  over  to 
the  north  and  east,  muttering  heavy  rumbles, 
scattering  flashes  of  forked  light,  pouring  rain, 
and  throwing  a  span  of  imperial  dyes  upon  the 
retreating  cohorts  of  storm  as  they  vanished 
in  the  sunlight,  leaving  the  blue  empyrean — a 
New  York  summer  sky. 

Within  the  Narrows  the  terraced  lawns,  on 
the  high  escarpments  of  Hamilton  and  Wads- 
wrorth,  after  the  shower  were  lush,  redolent  and 
emerald  as  on  a  May  morning,  their  "reeking 
tubes  and  iron  shards"  stretched  at  rest,  with 
brown  sides  glistening,  like  strange,  uncouth 
domesticated  animals,  blinking  i'  the  sun.  Brightly 
flashed  the  waters  of  the  Upper  Bay — above 
them  the  charming  homes  and  cottages  on 
Brooklyn  shores ;  the  graceful  outlines  of  the 
Bridge  arch,  and,  center  of  all,  the  great  city  on 


166  TEN  DAYS  ABROAD 

its  own  isle,  beneath  its  glorious  canopy — the 
realization  of  a  radiant  vision  in  the  peaceful 
quiet  of  this  Sunday  afternoon. 

Crowded  excursion  steamers  whistled.  Their 
crowds  shouted  and  waved  welcomes  to  the 
incoming  Furnessia,  whose  passengers  waved 
again,  while  Liberty's  giantess  smiled  down 
benignly.  Steerage  looked  on  in  quiet  wonder. 
Citizens  of  Manhatta  and  of  the  mighty  Yankee 
nation  sang  "Home  Again!"  without  regard  to 
words  until  their  throats  were  hoarse.  Their 
hearts  swelling  with  pride  of  their  own  land,  the 
harbor  in  its  beauty;  the  city  in  its  power,  big 
with  events  for  the  dawrning  century  —  full 
of  promise  for  glorious  and  ringing  deeds  to  be 
storied  and  sung ;  and  more  potent  for  the  future 
than  all  that  has  been,  or  that  is  in  the  world's 
foreign  ports  and  shores. 

Up  the  broad  Hudson  with  its  banks  rising 
in  tier  on  tier  of  marvelous  buildings  to  the  skies, 
we  moved,  and  glided  presently  into  the  harbor 
of  the  slip.  An  interval  of  greeting  friends, 
the  turmoil  of  trunks,  and  the  scramble  of 


AUF    WIEDERSEHEN!  167 

customs  on  the  long  pier,  the  crowd  thinning  as 
night  came  on,  until  steamer  and  pier  were 
well  nigh  deserted.  Those  who  had  haunted  her 
decks  and  cabins  for  ten  days  past  were  scattered 
far  and  wide,  when  the  moon  rode  forth  upon 
the  clouds  over  the  tall  buildings  of  Manhattan. 
Many  had  bidden  their  last  farewells,  and  were 
already  speeding  away  by  train  to  the  North, 
South,  East  and  West — beyond  all  earthly  power 
to  reunite  until  Gabriel's  trump.  Others  at  home 
recounted  their  holiday  as  a  pleasant  dream,  and 
retired  to  rest  before  entering  anew  upon  the 
work-a-day  world. 


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